After increasing VAT on petrol to 22 percent from 0.1 percent over the last two years, the government decided to honour its commitment made to keep the price of petrol below Rs 60 litre. This can only mean one thing – elections are round the corner and the government is beginning to get jittery.
The State will be going to the polls in less than 10 months from now and the State BJP-led government is only too aware of its track record of the past four years, so it now appears that it is going back to the poll agenda of 2012 to attract votes. It had then promised to bring down the price of petrol by Rs 11 a litre and it did so by bringing down VAT to 0.1 percent, a move that had been welcomed by all. But over the years the price of petrol kept climbing, not only due to the Centre’s revisions, but also adjustments by a cash-strapped State government looking at additional means to increase its revenue. Now suddenly the same government has reversed that upward revision of petrol price to a downward revision.
After having failed on various other fronts, the price of petrol appears to be the main weapon in BJP’s armoury that it will bring out and use whenever it requires to send a message that it is keeping its promises. It brought down the price of petrol and is smiling about it. But this means little. Can a State and its people continue to trust a government and a party that has gone back on so many promises – including on petrol price as it increased the price so often in the past months – just because it has reduced VAT on petrol by 2 percent at this point of time? The people, especially the voters, are not likely to forget all the broken promises easily. There have been too many of them over the past four years for Goans to forget and fall for the drop in petrol prices. The BJP needs more than a Re 1 cut in petrol prices to redeem itself in the eyes of the electorate.
How can a government that has consistently failed to meet its own deadlines and keep its own promises expect to go to the people and then hope that the electorate will return the party to power? The list of failures is long. The casinos are still sitting pretty on the waters of the River Mandovi, the Regional Plan has still not been finalised, the Medium of Instruction issue remains smouldering, there is no minority commission appointed, mining operations are still to commence fully. The list can go on and against this long list of negatives, a Re 1 cut in petrol price is negligible, almost insignificant.
But this decision gives the Goa government much media mileage. Across the country media houses have been reporting on how the Goa government has reduced VAT on petrol to keep the price of petrol below Rs 60 and fulfilling an election promise. None of the media houses report about how the Goa government has failed to keep various other promises. That is what this government has been good at, getting positive publicity for the little things it does, but no bad or negative publicity for the rampant changes in land zoning or delays in finalising a Regional Plan for the State. The rest of India may get fooled by this government, but Goans are smart and will see through every publicity exercise that this government engages in.
