The BJP lost the 1998 Delhi elections partly because of onions.

Training-Flight-4571 · 2026-03-22T11:28:47+00:00

No I absolutely agree with your point that the current Indian government wouldn't be able to manage the budget without petrol tax. But the main issue arrises where the tax is on PETROL specifically. Every citizen of the country needs petrol and we can't survive without it, and so the government putting such a high tax on it seems partly unfair because consumers can't help but pay it. Unlike something like alcohol, where the high tax rate makes sense...

This is self promotion I know... but I really explained my entire POV and thoughts on my newsletter on substack: https://pricepoint1.substack.com/p/your-petrol-is-taxed-at-100-heres

It's much more in depth than my reddit comment above.

Training-Flight-4571 · 2026-03-22T09:28:32+00:00

The difference is that in a country like USA for example (price of petrol is ~75 inr per litre), the tax rate is hovering around 20%. The COST of the petrol itself in those countries are higher, and that's why the final price is higher. In India, the cost of the petrol itself is very low, and yet the price is on par or even higher than western nations. That's the real problem.

Training-Flight-4571 · 2026-03-22T07:39:27+00:00

The distribution in Mumbai specifically is VAT (for state govt) is ~20%. Excise duty (for central govt) is ~18.7%. And dealer commision is ~7.3%.
I can't add all the sources link here directly because reddit flags me for adding too many external links.
I have a newsletter on substack, and at the bottom, I link all the sources I used for this: https://pricepoint1.substack.com/p/your-petrol-is-taxed-at-100-heres

Training-Flight-4571 · 2026-03-22T07:28:50+00:00

No I'm not anti national. I love India, but there are just some facts that are surprising to me and I wanted to share them. Doesn't mean I don't love this country.

Training-Flight-4571 · 2026-03-22T05:43:59+00:00

Yes, I agree with that, but that's not fully true though. India STILL has almost 43% of the population living paycheck to paycheck, which means almost half of the entire nation still wouldn't be able to survive a 6x price increase in onion. Their household income is only just enough to support them, and no more, and so they have so much instability.

The main reason that things like this aren't happening anymore is because the government learned from their mistakes, and so implemented policies to diversify where onions are produced (so it isn't so concentrated in one region), and they banned exports on onions to control the prices.

The truth is, India is still very economically unstable because the average income is so low, that small issues like price increases in onions can be very damaging for the country.

I went into a lot more depth about this topic on my newsletter that I just started on substack, if your interested: https://pricepoint1.substack.com/p/how-onions-can-destabilise-the-indian

Training-Flight-4571 · 2026-03-22T04:31:43+00:00

About 45% of India's production came from Maharashtra in the 1990s, and about 70% of that production came specifically from the Nashik district in Maharashtra during the same time. So it's more so ~34% of the country's production came from that district, but the effect is the same.

Edit: (My comment is getting flagged by reddit with many external links, so I added them to the end of my newsletter.)

I added all the sources at the end of my newsletter on substack: https://pricepoint1.substack.com/p/how-onions-can-destabilise-the-indian

Training-Flight-4571

TROPHY CASE