Is there a larger conspiracy behind Manjunath's death ?
Manju died on my birthday. I don't know for how many years I would remember him & what he must have meant to his parents & friends on each of my birthdays.
I do not think I have the same courage as Manjunath aka Manju or Macha had, but I have made a commitment to myself today that I will atleast try & spread his message. I am sure Manju is there up in the skies waiting to become a star & waiting to see if his friends, collegemates, colleagues, Indians & human beings in general would provide him redemption or let his sacrifice go waste.
Manju became a whistleblower on what is in fact a continuing & the biggest scam of all times in independent India, if you take into account all PSU petrol pumps in the country.
Let me take an illustration A litre of diesel costs around Rs. 32, and a litre of kerosene (used to adulterate diesel & petrol) costs Rs. 10 (it is cheaper because of heavy subsidization as it is the 'poor man's fuel'). If a petrol pump sells 20,000 litres of adulterated diesel (diesel adulterated with kerosene in 1:1 ratio) the scam is to the tune of Rs. 2 lakhs a week for a small petrol pump. All figures are apparently average figures, and are courtesy a Star News report on Manjunath titled 'Hindustani'. An apt name, Star News!
The figure is just for diesel, margins for petrol adulteration are double that of diesel (petrol sells at about Rs. 50). Even assuming that the money an average petrol pump owner makes by adulterating petrol & diesel is Rs. 3 lakhs a week, this number multiplied by even 10% of all petrol pumps in India (assuming rest are all in cities & are better regulated) is an ENORMOUS figure, and is for EVERY WEEK. This money then goes on to fund the illegal activities of many a politician, mafia don & maybe terrorists as well.
It is important to realize that the honest Indian taxpayer loses out twice in this bargain - once when kerosene meant for the poor is heavily subsidized from the taxpayers' money & channeled to adulterate petrol / diesel and then when the same person buys adulterated & obviously inferior fuel at high prices for his vehicle. As petrol is priced & taxed in a way to cross-subsidize kerosene, LPG & diesel (to a smaller extent) the normal person who drives a petrol car / bike is virtually paying twice the money he ought to have paid in the first place. Interesting also to note is that fuel price increases must make dishonest dealers even happier as fuel demand is highly inelastic to price & it gives them even higher margins to play with & make even higher profits (this is because kerosene prices never rise in the same quantum as petrol & diesel prices do). The temptation for every petrol pump owner to indulge in adulteration of petrol & diesel with kerosene is huge as the petrol pumps get only about 10% of the money above as legal commision by the PSUs for selling its petrol & diesel.
At the root of the scam is the way petrol pumps are handed out to the favorites of ministers & political bigwigs who then help fund their election campaigns & help maintain their goons, who do all sorts of crimes at the politician's behest. To get a better idea of the scale of the scam & its pervasiveness across political parties, follow the links here, here, and here.
I do not think I have the same courage as Manjunath aka Manju or Macha had, but I have made a commitment to myself today that I will atleast try & spread his message. I am sure Manju is there up in the skies waiting to become a star & waiting to see if his friends, collegemates, colleagues, Indians & human beings in general would provide him redemption or let his sacrifice go waste.
Manju became a whistleblower on what is in fact a continuing & the biggest scam of all times in independent India, if you take into account all PSU petrol pumps in the country.
Let me take an illustration A litre of diesel costs around Rs. 32, and a litre of kerosene (used to adulterate diesel & petrol) costs Rs. 10 (it is cheaper because of heavy subsidization as it is the 'poor man's fuel'). If a petrol pump sells 20,000 litres of adulterated diesel (diesel adulterated with kerosene in 1:1 ratio) the scam is to the tune of Rs. 2 lakhs a week for a small petrol pump. All figures are apparently average figures, and are courtesy a Star News report on Manjunath titled 'Hindustani'. An apt name, Star News!
The figure is just for diesel, margins for petrol adulteration are double that of diesel (petrol sells at about Rs. 50). Even assuming that the money an average petrol pump owner makes by adulterating petrol & diesel is Rs. 3 lakhs a week, this number multiplied by even 10% of all petrol pumps in India (assuming rest are all in cities & are better regulated) is an ENORMOUS figure, and is for EVERY WEEK. This money then goes on to fund the illegal activities of many a politician, mafia don & maybe terrorists as well.
It is important to realize that the honest Indian taxpayer loses out twice in this bargain - once when kerosene meant for the poor is heavily subsidized from the taxpayers' money & channeled to adulterate petrol / diesel and then when the same person buys adulterated & obviously inferior fuel at high prices for his vehicle. As petrol is priced & taxed in a way to cross-subsidize kerosene, LPG & diesel (to a smaller extent) the normal person who drives a petrol car / bike is virtually paying twice the money he ought to have paid in the first place. Interesting also to note is that fuel price increases must make dishonest dealers even happier as fuel demand is highly inelastic to price & it gives them even higher margins to play with & make even higher profits (this is because kerosene prices never rise in the same quantum as petrol & diesel prices do). The temptation for every petrol pump owner to indulge in adulteration of petrol & diesel with kerosene is huge as the petrol pumps get only about 10% of the money above as legal commision by the PSUs for selling its petrol & diesel.
At the root of the scam is the way petrol pumps are handed out to the favorites of ministers & political bigwigs who then help fund their election campaigns & help maintain their goons, who do all sorts of crimes at the politician's behest. To get a better idea of the scale of the scam & its pervasiveness across political parties, follow the links here, here, and here.
The money involved as estimated in one of the reports above is Rs. 25 billion, in just a few years of the NDA government. The scam though is not new & is not limited to the NDA government, as Congress governments in the past have also been widely accused of being involved.
Manju apparently knew it all along that a lot of petrol pumps in his area rampantly adulterated petrol & diesel and he often tried to reason with them. I fear he might have found out a little too much for their comfort & they with the blessing of their political bosses might have committed the gruesome act. It is difficult to believe that someone can be naive enough to kill a person so blatantly if he didnt know that people in important places would eventually take care of him.
It is in these times I feel it would have been so much better if we lived in a barbaric nation. The government would have ordered a public killing of the convicts in the most painful way, and this would have deterred other people from doing such dastardly acts. I do not deny it would have been poetic justice & I would have felt relieved by it.
posted by Vimal at
11:27 am
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