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How to deal with fuel and cooking gas shortages?
We are not surprised that the country is experiencing fuel and cooking gas shortages due to the conflict in the Middle East. But our student unions of old political parties are up in arms, cursing the Balen government for the mess.
And poor Balen has not even taken the oath and is not expected to lead his cabinet for another week. And one of our former Ministers, who happens to be a Congressi is out on the streets telling the current government to give all of us subsidized fuel instead of hiking the prices. You know the government is broke, and you still expect them to foot the bill. This kind of thinking arises when you are no longer in power.
We import all of our fuel products from India, and India meets more than 80% of its demands from the Middle East. Our Nepal Oil Corporation (NOC) tells us that supply is normal and we have enough stock for now, but it seems that rationing the cooking gas will not allow hoarding by black marketers or businesses.
I think we have all kinds of experts in our government agencies who live in a bubble filled with corruption and do not have to worry about shortages because they have the means to get cooking gas and fuel whenever they need it. NOC is called 'Dubai' when it comes to our government agencies because the peons to the hakims all make a killing by somehow playing with the fuel and cooking gas distribution to dealers.
Instead of subsidizing our cooking gas, which we have been doing for decades, it is about time to stop the leakages and ask all to pay the full price. It is time for commercial users such as industries and restaurants and other ventures that require more to pay more. Once, our previous governments did try this and after a month, it failed because the dealer were not happy with different cylinders and pricing or just were lazy to do their job.
It seems that any new government regulation fails in this land because the byaparis are more powerful than the government. India has a two-tier system where residential buyers get 14.2 kg cylinder and commercial ones pay nearly double for the 19 kg ones. Hundreds of thousands of eateries across the country will have to close down as they cannot get adequate cooking gas to run their businesses efficiently.
Yes, induction stoves become a better option during such cooking gas shortages but it is diffcult to run a restaurant with only induction stoves. So how do we deal with the fuel and cooking gas shortages? I think we need to have a database, and more of a fuel and cooking gas card as well. If we were to do rationing, then let's do it right. We need to make sure that people are not queuing up in line every other day to grab their half a cylinder of cooking gas.
Kathmandu gets a bad rap as the world's most polluted city every other week. Many of our South Asian neighbors have started some sort of a 'break' thing by giving a day off for government offices and schools. I think we need to bring back the odd and even plates back. We have more than 10 lakhs motorcycles in the valley and thousands of old smoky vehicles. It's time we get strict on emissions and fine the violators heavily like a lakh fine for exceeding the limit.
It's time everyone got a full cylinder of cooking gas and have a limit on residential consumers like one refill every 25 days while commercial users must be allowed to buy what they need daily verified by the local ward where they do their business. NOC is getting normal supplies from the their Indian counterparts. We also have to take care of folks who have opened restaurants, bakeries, factories who need adequate stock to run their businesses as thousands are employed in these ventures.
If we really are running low on stock then we have no choice but to change our eating habits. The restaurants will shut down but our municipalities must ensure that landlords do not demand full monthly rent when they have no business. We have seen this happen during Covid times.
And for us residential users, we need to be creative with our food plans. Maybe popcorns for khaja and chuira and aloo-jhol as well. Since we mostly eat rice, use pressure cooker and maybe, just put some veggies and meat together and make a pulao instead of the usual dal bhat tarkari, chutney and more.
Let us hope there is some kind of resolution soon and the Middle East conflict will come to an end and the whole world will be on normal mode when it comes to fuel and cooking gas. If not, then induction stoves will do it and we will just have to get used to it. And what about your motorcycle or four-wheelers? Well, either buy a cycle or a horse or just do your 10,000 or more steps to work. And Kathmandu will no longer be in the top 3 ranking when it comes to the most polluted list as well.
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