Fuel price strike disrupts India

Transport, businesses and schools are hit as country's poorest cry foul.

Hanna IngberJuly 5, 2010 13:14Updated July 7, 2010 13:31

Taxi drivers walk amid parked taxis during a strike in Mumbai on June 22, 2010. (Rupak De Chowdhuri/Reuters)

MUMBAI, India — Kids played cricket on empty streets and motorbikes easily zoomed through normally congested intersections in Mumbai as opposition parties pulled off a nationwide strike Monday to protest a fuel price hike.

The strike, called by the main opposition Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the leftist bloc, closed businesses and schools and disrupted ground and air transportation. Police made thousands of arrests and sporadic acts of violence were reported in cities across the country.

The one-day strike represents a protest by the opposition parties and the nation’s lower and middle classes against the Congress-led government's policies that have led to spiraling food and fuel prices.

While India’s economy, one of the fastest growing in the world, is expected to increase by more than 8 percent this year, much of the country’s poor are left out. India — where one in two children is malnourished — accounts for a third of the world’s 1.4 billion poor people, according to the World Bank.

The government scrapped its fuel subsidies last month in an attempt to keep its promise to cut the fiscal deficit. The cut in subsidies led to a 6.7 percent increase in fuel prices, which is likely to add nearly one percentage point to the nation’s already double-digit inflation. The price of some food has gone up more than 70 percent in the past two years, according to India Today.

“Costs have gone sky high,” said architect and college teacher Sunil Magdum, who said he supported the strike and was riding a local train in Mumbai on Monday because he can no longer afford to drive his car regularly. The opposition parties have been successful, he added, “because they’re united today and [the] common man is with them.”

“This protest has been widely supported by the average common man because he is really the target of the government's policies," senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley told local reporters in the northern city of Lucknow on Monday. Jaitley was then arrested for illegal assembly.

India’s financial and entertainment capital Mumbai was one of the worst affected cities. Domestic airlines canceled almost 90 flights, schools and most businesses closed, protesters stood on train tracks to disrupt service, and the city’s ubiquitous taxies and auto rickshaws virtually disappeared from the streets. Opposition groups protested and workers attacked dozens of government buses.

One traveler arriving at Mumbai’s domestic airport, could not find a single taxi or rickshaw and had to rent a private tourist rental car to get home. He paid 1,000 rupees ($22) or about 10 times the normal cost.

The strike, the biggest by the opposition in recent years, cost the country about 30 billion rupees ($640 million) in lost business, according to the Confederation of Indian Industry.

Despite the strike, India’s Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said there was “no question” of rolling back the fuel price hike, as reported in the local press.