Can't we afford higher fuel prices?

Wham-Bam it's election time, oh yeah! And the government has given out its first promise! Cheaper fuel if you make us win!

Now, let us sit on a vantage point.

Few quarters ago, the RBI was helping the severely bleeding Oil Marketing Companies by subsidizing fuel, that is, providing it at a lesser price, so that, in effect, the OMCs can give the "junata" cheaper fuel. Now that did not work out nicely, crude was too high, and the subsidies could not curtail the losses. If we look at the balance sheets of these companies, HPCL incurred a QUARTERLY loss of Rs. -3218.92 crores in September, as against a profit of 726 crores in the YEAR before (that includes another dismal quarter offsetted by RBI issuing bonds and previous quarters' profits). The total debt of HPCL itself is Rs. 16786.70 crores.

Now with that information, we move ahead. The media (read "news channels bickering for a price cut in fuels") is demanding cheaper fuel. The government is anyways making losses on LPG sales, and the PM of India rightfully denied fuel cuts a week ago on the very reason. We are lucky to have such a great PM at the centre. An economist as a PM is the best thing we could ask for- and have, in this economic crisis.

We ought to be more responsible, and should stop demanding lower prices for fuel. It is also true that not everyone can afford highly priced petrol and diesel. But is it also not true that the section of the society that cannot afford that can always use the public transport system? Instead of bickering for cheaper fuel, the media and the responsible citizens of this country should influence and encourage the usage of public transport and methods like carpooling and bicycle usage. The youth should step up and boyfriends should stop flurrying about the city on their bikes with their girlfriends in pillion if they cannot afford it.

If we step away from the economic side, and again think, there's another point to this as well.

Oil is a depleting resource. Fuel emissions harm us, and harm the environment as well. People should be discouraged from using private vehicles for every peccadillo of a situation. Public transport system should be improved and promoted. Fuel is not water. Amusingly enough, even water is scarce, nowadays.

The Duckworth Lewis Method is a sad Method

In a cricket match between two sides: A and B, if A scores 240/3 in 30 overs and if side B scores 241/9 in 30 overs, then who wins?

The Duckworth-Lewis says side A.

Consider the next match that was played between the two sides: A scored 240/3 in 50 overs this time and B scored 241/9 in 50 overs. I won't make you guess this time on the winner.

Reason?

Justice says side B.

Now when we go back to the first scenario and change the data slightly,

Replace A by India and B by England. India scores 166/4 in 22 overs. Rains bring in the Duckworth-Lewis method. England end up scoring 178/8 in 22 overs (which happens to be a larger score in the same number of overs).

A simple plus-minus logic says England won. The Duckworth Lewis is not so simple, and it ends up declaring India as the winner (of course, England always knew their target of 198 and that is not my point- I'm not trying to make England win as I am an Indian and a patriot).

Now the result of the match may have significant effects on both the participants and the volatile media (read "newspapers" and "news channels") who will glorify the Indian victory and in doing so, have the capacity to put any person who really has that spirit of the game in him in an odd situation. Now if that person were the captain of the Indian cricket team, he would not mind much, or give much thought to it since many of his ancestor-captains had faced the wrath of this method, and this was the time to redeem those points. OK, given.

For a moment, give a thought to those England fellows, the side that could not win- they did not lose, by the way. Generalize that "side that could not win" to "sides that could not win" and you would find almost all the major cricket teams having been owned by this outdated (the DL actually was also never the opposite of outdated) method that the ICC still uses to resolve shortened matches. In the spirit of the game, they say, it lies.

In the spirit of any game, it is also true that no one should bicker at any loss befallen.

But in the spirit of any game, the result should be decided by the efforts of the participants, not by formulae created by some mathematicians who have no idea of the efforts put in by the participants in that very match- this is akin to making robots that have a human brain, if you get my point. My point in the last sentence however, is vague. As vague as the Duckworth Lewis method.