Petro crisis: Alternative measures are the only effective way out
The one-day missile war between Iran and Israel may have ended on Monday due to the 'orders' of US President Donald Trump, but it has prolonged the crisis in West Asia. According to the message released by Trump on social media, he first asked the Iranian leadership to stop firing missiles and rockets towards Israel. Then Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was also 'ordered' to immediately stop the missile attacks. This was done to bring the ceasefire and peace talks in West Asia back on track. It is difficult to say anything about whether the peace talks have come back on track or not. But one thing is clear that Trump is no longer in the mood to start a war with Iran again. His steadily declining political reputation in America and the political and legal obstacles arising over the war have made him realize that threats, intimidation and bullying also prove to be effective up to a point. He now wants to get out of the vortex in West Asia, but Iran is not giving him the way to do so in a respectful manner. On top of that, Netanyahu is constantly adding complications for Trump in the name of wiping out Hezbollah from Lebanon. All this development is continuously deepening the crisis facing the world economy.
This crisis has been going on for more than a hundred days. Trump had predicted that Iran would give up its weapons within 10 days. Nothing of the sort has happened. More than four thousand Iranian civilians, both American and Israeli, were killed in the bombing. The dead included the Supreme Leader and several military commanders. But neither the Iranian nuclear stockpile nor the missile manufacturing factories were destroyed. On the other hand, the loss of life in the US and its allies was negligible compared to the Iranians, but the financial loss was in no way less than that of Iran. The economies of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Kuwait have been in a state of collapse for more than three months. The export of crude oil and gas has been halted due to the Iranian 'occupation' of the Strait of Hormuz. Production has also come to a standstill due to the shutdown of exports. Such a cycle of events has increased the prices of crude oil to such an extent that no country in the world has been able to escape the impact of the inflation of petro-commodities.
The chances of a permanent agreement that had arisen with the two-week ceasefire between the US and Iran extending to more than two months now seem to be heading towards failure. Therefore, it has become necessary that a country like India, which is dependent on foreign countries for more than 80 percent of its oil requirements and more than 70 percent of its natural gas requirements, should take every possible step to reduce this dependence. In this regard, blending petrol and ethanol is a good solution. But the problem is that most of the motor vehicles plying on Indian roads are 10 to 20 years old. They cannot handle more than 10 percent ethanol. Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari has been insisting on blending ethanol in petrol up to 20 percent. In this context, he often refers to Brazil. But while saying this, he forgets that Brazil had started its ethanol blending policy in 2003 and now the expertise there has increased so much that the government has declared it mandatory for every vehicle to have an engine that uses only 'flex-fuel'. In the light of this experience, fitting engines suitable for flex-fuel can be made mandatory in newly manufactured vehicles in India too. Similarly, the popularity of battery-powered electric vehicles (EVs) can also be increased rapidly. Reduction in crude petroleum imports can be made possible only through revolutionary steps. Only such a reduction can put the national economy on the path to strengthening again.
