And now, rhetoric unlimited

The past ten days have been really interesting in the sense of the kind of political rhetoric you’ve got to hear, and believe me the pleasure gets magnified manifold when you watch it non-stop on television channels like Fox and CNN. Anxious to show he meant business, apart from being his father’s son, US President George W. Bush sort of readied the world for war, talking of getting the ‘folks that did this’, smoking them out of their caves, and getting them ‘dead or alive’. And then, once the initial shock-induced machismo wore over, Bush obviously realised that bombing Afghanistan wasn’t either easy or a solution, and that breaking up terrorist organisations is a very time-consuming and complex task. Besides, more than stray voices are now asking for proof that Osama bin Laden was responsible.

So you now see President Bush, on CNN, trying to do the impossible — to keep up the US mood for retribution by talk of war and strategic strikes, even while explaining that this is a really long haul, that Osama bin Laden is just one of the people the US wants, that a combination of diplomatic, intelligence, and political methods will be called for to achieve the ultimate goal! What is, the twin-track Prez said eloquently, the use of launching a $2 mn Cruise missile into a $10 tent, and getting just the butt of a camel!

Back home, Prime Minister Vajpayee’s rhetoric is even more hilarious, though thankfully, since neither Doordarshan nor Star TV have assumed CNN-like proportions, this doesn’t get broadcast every half hour. Well before the World Trade Centre strikes, Vajpayee had a series of meetings, with his Cabinet and with top economists and industry captains, each one promising a new blitzkrieg of initiatives from the government to kickstart the economy — barring one lot of initiatives, on the stock market, nothing concrete has really emerged. On another front, to tackle poverty, he announced a Rs 10,000 crore food-for-work programme called Sampoorna Grameen Rojgar Yojana (SGRY), and this was formalised in double-quick time (within a month) — but, at a basic level, the SGRY is really just a little more than a combination of various existing food-for-work schemes under the rural development ministry anyway!

And, after the WTC strikes, a very sombre PM went live on national TV, to prepare the nation for sacrifices and harsh economic measures — ten days later, nothing’s happened, even prices of LPG and kerosene which are heavily subsidised haven’t been raised.

Petroleum minister Ram Naik, whose precise job was to ensure that these prices got raised regularly in order to cut the horrendously-large Rs 15,000 crore oil pool deficit, appears to be even more concerned with making an impact, through speech. Remember, when oil prices rose dramatically many months ago, this is the man who wrote letters to the OPEC asking that they supply us oil on slightly concessional terms (presumably because of our poverty)! In case you’re wondering where he got the idea from, India supplies poor people concessional grain from ration shops, so maybe the concept originated from here.

Though in Shanghai when, after the WTC episode, oil prices soared dramatically, Naik sought to quell the nation’s fears. He told reporters that India was in the midst of finalising a strategy of raising its strategic oil reserves — currently refineries keep 20 days consumption, and this is to be raised to 60 days. In other words, don’t panic, we’ll sort things out.

But what Naik did not, and cannot, say, is that this talk of increasing India’s strategic reserves keeps coming up from time to time — the last time it came up was after the Pokharan nuclear tests — and that no decision has ever been taken (the first time a committee was set up on the subject was in the late ’70s). And the reason why no decision is taken is also the same — who will bear the costs?

India uses 100 mn tonnes of petroleum products per year, and has strategic reserves of 20 days already — so, to have a 2-month reserve, it needs capacity to stock up for another 40 days. At Rs 3,000 per tonne for creating the tankage and piping, that’s an additional expenditure of Rs 3,000 crore. Add to this, the cost of the crude oil that you need to fill up these tanks and, at current prices, that’s an additional expenditure of another Rs 11,000 crore.

Now, to be fair, while Rs 14,000 crore is a large sum of money, it can be mustered if it is really essential for security reasons. But the fact is that for the last several years, and decades, successive petroleum ministers haven’t really pursued the matter with any great sense of urgency. After all when, not so long ago, at $9 a barrel oil prices were less than a third of today’s, Ram Naik never even thought of strategic reserves.

And they wonder why no one takes politicians seriously.

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