Revenge of the sweetest crop is surprisingly bitter
India’s “ICE” age is facing a “3G” meltdown. People driving petrol-powered Internal Combustion Engine vehicles these days have these three words on their lips – gaadi, ganna, govt. Two of them much loved, but all three a cause of concern for the past few months, as blended fuel sends mileage lower and driving cost higher. Social media is full of unverified engine damage complaints. Yes, it’s Win Diesel but for how long, no one knows, as there are plans to blend that too.
My Bond hatchbacks (Indo-Japanese and Korean, not British) are also shaken and stirred. When their tank is being filled, these new-age, hi-tech cars promise to go a distance on it, but end up at a fuel pump 100-140km short of that number. Perhaps, the chip inside doesn’t know the new juice well enough.
Each time that happens, it feels like the humble ganna striking back. As a child of 1980s, going to meet my grandparents in western UP meant driving past cane-laden bullock carts, headed towards the sugar mills. We would reach out and pluck a few canes. Then, since the Ambassadors and Fiats in those days didn’t have zippy acceleration, we could often see the person driving the ganna gaadi get angry and curse at us. While we kids in the car would start gorging on sweet cane, the person driving the car would scold us for doing so, and warn us of no bad deed going unpunished.
That loot, I feel, has now come to haunt us as Ethanol-in-petrol in which no one, save the blender, seems to take any pride. Indeed, drivers to owners are increasingly seeing the blending as a blunder. Suddenly, range anxiety has become real for people driving ICE vehicles, something earlier limited to those with battery-powered and CNG cars. Talk of blended diesel, is growing the nervousness. So much so that I now half expect sugarcane juice vendors to say “zero check kariye” when handing over a glass of summer goodness.
Despite a very spirited defence of blending by govt, petrol vehicles continue to have their differences with ethanol. In a reversal of roles, their owners have become like the sugarcane cart drivers getting something (their mileage) snatched away in the best-case scenario, and much more in the worst-case scenario. All they’ve to say is this: Dear Anna, spare us the ganna.
Disclaimer
Views expressed above are the author’s own.
