Nihar Ranjan Panigrahi, 29, an engineer in Ranchi, says commuting on his motorbike is getting costlier by the day but one cannot risk using public transport amid pandemic
The rising petrol prices have meant that every month we have to keep making new adjustments to our monthly home budget. I am a daily bike user and travel nearly 12 kms for work purposes daily. Believe me, rising petrol prices are a big concern. Where earlier say ₹500 was going towards petrol now we have to set aside ₹700 for it.
Not only that, the prices of many commodities like fruits, vegetables etc have also shot up because of the transportation cost due to rise in petrol prices. So, as a whole, our monthly budget has gone up by a total of around ₹2,000.
I live in Ranchi but I have my roots in Odisha. Recently my wife and I had to go to our hometown there for some very urgent work. Trains and buses had been booked to full and in any case we didn’t feel very safe using public transport for the long distance during the pandemic. So my bike it was! We travelled several hundreds of kilometres on our bike and this trip burnt a big hole in my pocket.
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What is the common man supposed to do? One can only feel angry when you feel the pinch. But there is little option for us. There are many people who have lost their jobs during lockdown period and so many others who either faced salary-cut or no raise since last year.
Public transport still doesn’t feel like a safe option, what with so many people not wearing masks in public. One cannot risk contracting the virus. Your personal vehicle is costly but at least it is safe.
My wife cycles every day to her workplace. She doesn’t have to worry about the rising petrol prices with her cycle. And she also feels happy that she isn’t contributing towards pollution. Perhaps the rising petrol prices will push many others to use cycles. However, for many, cycle can’t be a mode of family transport.
The government really needs to work on putting a stop to the rise in petrol prices. While the prices of oil and petrol barrels have been falling worldwide, I wonder why our government is not passing this benefit to the consumer! Plus, the government also needs to be really considerate with the pricing of everything: this is the post-pandemic world! Also, public transport needs to be made more robust.
As told to Yog Maya Singh