It is nearly magical how a politically critical issue like price rise can be presented in vastly different scales, one to reassure and the other to shock.
Take, for instance, the recent water tariff hike. Minister for water resources Roshy Augustine said the hike was just one paise for a litre of water.
This is a smart articulation of a public policy as it would promptly invoke the image of the ubiquitous one-litre bottled drinking water. A one paise hike on this bottle would, on the face of it, seem highly negligible.
Fact is, the new water tariff is not for bottled drinking water but for the water stored in 500- or 1000-litre tanks on roof-tops.
A middle-class family of four in Kerala consumes 40 to 60 500-litre tanks or 20-30 1000-litre tanks, or 20,000 to 30,000 one-litre bottles, a month.
While incrementally pushing up fuel prices, the BJP government at the centre had also put forth a similar argument. The fuel costs are increased only in decimal, paise, terms, it was argued.
The Opposition UDF's attempt in the Assembly on Tuesday was to rubbish the minister's 'negligible theory' and paint the latest water tariff hike as something enormous, unheard of in Kerala.
Congress MLA M Vincent, while moving an adjournment motion on the water tariff hike in the Assembly on Tuesday, said the hike would lead to at least a two-and-a-half fold increase in water bills. The one-paise argument was a big deception, he said. "Unmatched cruelty," is how Vincent termed the hike.
He said what the minister masked by claiming a mere one-paise hike was the fact that a family consuming 10 units or 10 kilolitres a month would have to pay an additional Rs 100 every month. Such a family will now have to pay Rs 144 in place of Rs 44 a month. "If the five per cent yearly rise in tariffs since 2021 is also factored in, the monthly increase alone would be Rs 107.72. What is Rs 44 now will be Rs 151.72," Vincent said.
Later, opposition leader V D Satheesan said that the largest number of families in Kerala consume between 20 and 30 kilolitres or 30,000 litres. He said these families would now have to pay Rs 442 in place of Rs 142. "A difference of Rs 300. It is this difference the minister calls a hike of just one paise," Satheesan said. "This is outrageous," Satheesan said.
The minister argued that the "minor move" was made to conduct the day to day affairs of the Kerala Water Authority.
He said the KWA suffers a loss of nearly Rs 12 for producing one kilolitre or 1000 litres of water. If the production cost was Rs 22.85 for every 1000 litres, the revenue from this is Rs 10.92; a difference of Rs 11.93.
Further, he said the KWA had a consolidated loss of over Rs 4000 crore and outstanding liabilities of Rs 2567 crore.
Vincent pointed out the other side of the story. He said the KWA had failed to recover over Rs 1500 crore as dues mostly from government institutions. He said the Local Self Government Department alone had to pay Rs 957 crore to the KWA. There are institutions that have failed to pay water charges for the last 15 years. The KWA hopes to mobilise Rs 400 crore from the hike.
"Why should the common man suffer for your inefficiency," opposition leader Satheesan said. He added that the KWA's distribution loss was a whopping 45 per cent. "People are made to suffer even for this," he said.
Satheesan also questioned the propriety of the government move to introduce the tariff hike through a government order rather than in the Assembly, especially when it was in session.
The minister argued that the water tariff hike was not a policy decision but the culmination of a long administrative process that began over a year ago.
However, Speaker A N Shamseer ruled that even if it was an administrative matter, the decision that has a direct bearing on the lives of people should have been ideally announced in the Assembly first.
