Amitabh Bachchan’s 753rd tweet – the superstar carefully numbers his social media activity – was a somewhat unfunny joke on rising inflation. Fed up with rising petrol prices, a Mumbaikar goes to a petrol pump to buy “two to four rupees” of petrol in order to “spray on his car” in order to “burn it”. Clearly, it was unviable for a middle class Indian to now even own a car.
This was in 2012 – a time when jokes around the price of petrol were so popular they almost made up their own humour genre in India. This was also a time when the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance was tottering. And as it soon learnt, there was little more damaging politically than humour. The widespread mocking of fuel prices served to create a middle class “common sense” that the UPA was a time of exceptional misrule and corruption.
Since then, oil prices have skyrocketed, going up approximately by a quarter. This week they even crossed the psychological barrier of Rs 100 per litre in some cities.
Radio silenceIronically, unlike the torrent of petrol price jokes in 2012 and 2013, there was little this time even though the prices were not only much higher, they were far more due...
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