 You're watching News Made Easy. I'm Anindya Chakravarthy. You're told that whenever fuel prices rise, it's only the rich who are affected and they can afford it. The poor are not affected at all because they really don't use petrol and diesel. That is absolutely untrue. Fuel price hikes hurt the poor the most. Not only because petrol and diesel have an impact on prices across the board, but also because they affect directly what the poor use. I'm going to take only two examples for you. I'm going to take two examples for you. I'm going to take a lower middle class employee or someone who is self-employed in a city or a town who earns about 15,000 rupees a month. You know that you come across such people all the time. And I'm also going to take a small farmer who has about two acres of agricultural land. So how does it affect them? Let's just look at it. I'm going to start with the person who is the urban worker, urban employee who earns about 15,000 rupees. They have a bike because they live on the outskirts of the city. They have to travel to work and a bike is cheaper because public transport is very bad in our cities and public transport is expensive. So they use bikes and on an average, these people because they live on the outskirts of the city, they have a commute of about 40 kilometers per day, alright? Some would have a little less, some would have even more, okay? And the bike gives them a mileage of somewhere between 30 to 45 kilometers to a liter. So what am I going to do? I'm going to take what is the extra spend because of the fuel price hike, petrol price hike. So I'm going to take mileage of 30 kilometers per hour, 35, 40 and 45. And I'm going to look at the petrol prices about two years ago when it was approximately about 75 rupees. And I'm going to take petrol prices which is hovering around 105 rupees depending on which city you're in. And then I'm going to calculate the change, okay? So at 30 kilometers per liter where the fuel bill is the maximum, it used to be 2600 earlier two years ago, now it's 3640. Why? Because I'm taking 26 working days here. The change is a little more than 1000 rupees is being spent just on commute, okay? If it's 35 kilometers per liter, you have the numbers on your screen, it's about 890 rupees extra. 40 kilometers per liter mileage, the difference that comes is about 780 rupees per month for 26 days. And at 45 kilometers per liter where the petrol bill is the lowest, it used to be about 1730 odd, it's gone up to about 2400, the difference is close to 700 rupees. Now you'll say that is not much but remember, this person earns just 15,000 rupees. And also remember it's most likely that their salaries have not increased because of COVID and the slowdown. Chances are they were sacked at the peak of the COVID wave, have got another job back probably at a lower salary. So in any case, just a single increase, the increase in petrol prices has increased their costs relative to their salary by 5 to 7%. That's a huge increase, that's a huge increase from just one source. Add to that other things like inflation, just one source, 5 to 7% of the total salary, okay? That's the massive effect that it has had, the massive impact on such people who earn very little. Okay, let me look at farmers and here I'm looking at farmers who own up to 2 acres of land. And what are the expenses? Where do they use fuel? They use diesel to power their water pumps and they use diesel for tractors, harvesters, threshers and stuff like that. The government's own committee calculations show that for paddy for an entire season per acre, about 103 liters of diesel are used, okay? I'm taking various sources, I'm taking an average here, 103 liters of diesel per acre per season for paddy. For wheat, it's lower because wheat requires less irrigation, less water. It's 83 liters per acre of diesel. That's the cost per season for a 2 acre, for 1 acre of land. So we have to now multiply that by 2. So what am I going to do? I'm going to look at the average yield and multiply that per acre and multiply that by 2 to say what is the likely output, okay? So output on paddy and wheat, output on paddy on an average is 30 quintals for 2 acres and about 26 quintals for wheat on 2 acres. Diesel when it was about 67 rupees would have cost about 13,800 rupees to produce paddy and about 11,100 odd to produce wheat on those 2 acres is just the diesel cost, okay? Now that it is close to 93 rupees diesel, that cost has gone up beyond 19,000 for paddy and more than 15,000, close to 15,500 for wheat for 2 acres of land. And I'm going to now take the increased cost per quintal. What is the extra cost per quintal? Extra cost per quintal, just diesel cost is 179 rupees on paddy and 166 rupees on wheat. These are average numbers, right? They could be, they'll be within a range. This is the average that you'll be getting. How much extra minimum support price have these farmers got in these 2 years? The difference is 125 rupees per quintal for paddy and 175 rupees per quintal for wheat. So you understand that if a farmer owns 2 acres of land, right? Or any, for instance, per quintal of paddy, they're actually earning 54 rupees less compared to the MSP that has gone up. 54 rupees less compared to 2 years ago, right? Just because of diesel prices. Forget about rising fertilizer prices. Forget about other prices that have gone up, seeds, etc. Just diesel prices means they're losing out by about 54 rupees on diesel alone on paddy. On wheat, they are just gaining about 9 rupees. That is it. That is the gain. And that's little gain that they're getting because of the MSP hike is being lost because of the hike in prices of other things, which itself is caused by fuel price hike because fuel prices affect freight, they affect everything and cause an overall inflation. That is why the poor are the most likely to be the worst hit by fuel price hikes. Don't believe the propaganda that they are not affected by this. Keep watching NewsClick because this is the only place that you're going to get news and analysis of this kind. Thank you for watching.