How to oil the economy if we cannot afford oil?

"Between 2001 and 2010, advanced countries saw an average economic growth of 1.7%," while developing economies and emerging markets grew at 6.2%, wrote Roshan Kishore. The difference in growth rate was down to just 2% in 2015. This difference will shrink further to 0.7% in 2021 and 0.8% in 2022 according to the World Economic Outlook (WEO) of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). This is because low interest rates helped advanced economies to stimulate their economies by borrowing. Interest rate on 10-year bonds in the US is less than 2%, whereas it is over 6% in India. The reason is inflation. In June, the consumer price index (CPI) grew by 5.4% in the US and by 6.26% in India, Roshan Kishore and Vineet Sachdev. CPI inflation in the US is largely due to base effect because it was 0.65% in June 2020, compared to India's inflation at 6.23% in June 2020. This means price rise in India has been compounded. Food contributes 39% of our consumer prices while it is only 13.9% in the US. Services contribute 58% to the CPI in the US while it is just 28% in India, although services contributed 55.39% in gross value added (GVA) to our economy in 2019-20, IBEF. One of the reasons for weak economic growth and high inflation in India is the soaring price of petrol and diesel because of taxes. "In mid-July, petrol was supplied o Delhi's dealers at Rs 41.39 a litre. It cost the consumers Rs 101.58 because of a 145% mark-up mainly on account of central and state taxes," Times of India (TOI). Fuel weightage in CPI is only 6.84%, but it contributed 13% of the headline inflation." Transport and communication contribute about 8.59% in CPI and the cost of these went up 11.56% in June. High prices are affecting demand. But petroleum is not the only oil attracting high taxes. India imported about 13.35 million tonnes of edible oil worth about Rs 61,559 crore (Rs 615.59 billion) in 2019-20. International prices of palm oil and soybean have jumped because of increased demand from China, extraction of renewable fuel from soybean oil, and falling production. On top of this, "the effective rate of import duties, including agriculture infrastructure and development cess and social welfare cess, has been 35.75% with effect from February 2, 2021. The effective import duties on 'refined, bleached and deodorised (RBD) palm oil' is 59.4%. Similarly, the effective import duties on crude and refined soybean oil and sunflower oil is in the range of 38.50% to 49.50%." Shocking taxes on food. "The 2019-20 Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS), which was released last week by the National Statistical Office (NSO), shows a fall in unemployment rate from 5.8% in 2018-19 to 4.8% in 2019-20," wrote Abhishek Jha and Roshan Kishore. "In keeping with established wisdom on economic transformation, the share of agriculture employment in India has been falling gradually." But this trend has reversed. "On a year-on-year basis, urban India saw a reduction of 11.05 million jobs in the April-June 2020 and rural India saw the addition of 14.7 million jobs." "The weakening of economic activity forced many to seek distress employment, resulting in a 43-million rise in total employment numbers in 2019-20 from a year earlier," wrote Prof Himanshu. "An increase in distress employment usually show up in higher employment of women, children and the elderly, as households push the reserve labour force into the active labour market to maintain their real incomes." "That the count of workers declined in manufacturing and construction, which are among the largest non-farm sectors, is clear evidence of job losses there." Inequality hurts much more in a poor country like India, wrote Duvvuri Subbarao. "Last year when the economy went through its biggest contraction since independence, the number of billionaires in the country increased from 102 to 140. This, even as 75 million people retreated into poverty, accounting for 60% of the global increase in poverty, as per Pew Research." The interruption in education will leave a lasting legacy of inequality for years to come. Falling income with rising prices, leads to rising hunger, Gaon Connection. But, why don't they eat cake? No cooking oil.