The man who saw tomorrow

Should he be named a visionary, the one who became a darling of millions (roughly 320 mn) of middle class households in India? Am talking about none other than our dear Finance minister, Mr P Chidambaram.

He came with a slew of sops for salaried individuals (or I should say tax payers :)), giving benefits to the tune of 40K-50K per year per earning member in a family.

Now consider this:

- Inflation is in the region of 12%, compared to measly 5% when the budget was announced

- Air turbine fuel (ATF, which is nearly 40% of operating cost of an airline) has caused airlines to increase the fuel surcharge on all sectors

- With oil prices touching all time peak (though now it has slipped a lot, to the figures of 120$ per barrel, still it is pretty high), the govt has been forced to increase the retail oil prices by Rs 5

- Increased interest rates, CRR, bank lending rates etc.

Let's see what has been the impact of this on a small nuclear family:

- If a nuclear family of 3 makes a domestic air-trip every year, there earlier cost of the travel (to-fro, only airlines) if it was say 15K, would be easily
in the region of 25-30k, making a dent of additional 17k (on an average) per year.

- Assuming the similar family had a 4 wheeler vehicle, and they consumed 80 lt of petrol every month, the cost would have gone up roughly by 5.xx * 80 = 400+ Rs per month, which translates to nearly 5000 Rs in a year. Note, you can even add additional LPG price (of say 50 * 6 cylinders) per year.

- Inflation figures do not look good either. Assuming a monthly ration budget (for the same household) of 5000 Rs. We can take a conservative contribution of essential goods (including oil) which effect a common man because of inflation, say 70%. So with inflation hovering at 12%, the monthly budget for the household would have increased by: 5000 * 12% * 70% = Rs 420 or approx Rs 5000 per year (assuming inflation stays at this level)

- If the same household has taken a loan of 20 lacs for 20 years, with increased interest rates, the additional EMI burden would be roughly to the tune of 400 Rs, which means roughly Rs 5000 per year.

The net effect: 17 + 5 + 5 + 5 = 32K

So you can see how our dear Finance minister saw the future, he knew what was in store for us, and gave a respite to (I can say 'at least') the salaried middle-class Indians, and hence the title, 'The man who saw tomorrow'.

Please note, this is not to say that the self-employed population does not pay tax (and did not get benefits from the new income tax slabs), but the effect is directly seen on working class, where tax is deducted at source.

Now let me come to the essence of writing this up - given the above facts, how can we ensure the benefits which the govt passed on to us during budgets stay along with us, and let not increased cost of living, bother us. And above all, how to envision the big picture - saving fuel, saving environment, conservation etc to help the planet and yourself.

Most of the people would be already aware of the things, but I would like to highlight them in a different way in my next post on 'What is your carbon footprint?' and how to reduce it.