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By:

Quaid Najmi

4 January 2025 at 3:26:24 pm

Commercial LPG 'evaporates' in Maharashtra

Mumbai : The short supply of commercial LPG cylinders turned ‘grim’ on Wednesday as hundreds of small and medium eateries – on whom the ordinary working Mumbaikars depend on for daily meals – shut down or drastically trimmed menus, on Wednesday.   With an estimated 50,000-plus hotels, restaurants and small food joints, the crunch is beginning to be felt severely, said Federation of Hotel and Restaurant Association of India (FHRAI) vice-president and Hotel and Restaurant Association Western...

Commercial LPG 'evaporates' in Maharashtra

Mumbai : The short supply of commercial LPG cylinders turned ‘grim’ on Wednesday as hundreds of small and medium eateries – on whom the ordinary working Mumbaikars depend on for daily meals – shut down or drastically trimmed menus, on Wednesday.   With an estimated 50,000-plus hotels, restaurants and small food joints, the crunch is beginning to be felt severely, said Federation of Hotel and Restaurant Association of India (FHRAI) vice-president and Hotel and Restaurant Association Western India (HRAWI) spokesperson Pradeep Shetty.   “We are in continuous touch with the concerned authorities, but the situation is very gloomy. There is no response from the Centre or the Ministry of Petroleum on when the situation will ease. We fear that more than 50 pc of all eateries in Mumbai will soon down the shutters. The same will apply to the rest of the state and many other parts of India,” Shetty told  ‘ The Perfect Voice’ .   The shortage of commercial LPG has badly affected multiple sectors, including the hospitality and food industries, mass private or commercial kitchens and even the laundry businesses, industry players said.   At their wits' ends, many restaurateurs resorted to the reliable old iron ‘chulhas’ (stoves) fired by either coal or wood - the prices of which have also shot up and result in pollution - besides delaying the cooking.   Anticipating a larger crisis, even domestic LPG consumers besieged retail dealers in Mumbai, Pune, Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, Ratnagiri, Kolhapur, Akola, Nagpur to book their second cylinder, with snaky queues in many cities. The stark reality of the 12-days old Gulf war with the disturbed supplies has hit the people and industries in the food supply chains that feed crores daily.   “The ordinary folks leave home in the morning after breakfast, then they rely on the others in the food chain for their lunch or dinner. Many street retailers have also shut down temporarily,” said Shetty.   Dry Snacks A quick survey of some suburban ‘khau gullies’ today revealed that the available items were mostly cold sandwiches, fruit or vegetable salads, cold desserts or ice-creams, cold beverages and packed snacks. Few offered the regular ‘piping hot’ foods that need elaborate cooking, or charging higher than normal menu rates, and even the app-based food delivery system was impacted.   Many people were seen gloomily munching on colorful packets of dry snacks like chips, chivda, sev, gathiya, samosas, etc. for lunch, the usually cheerful ‘chai ki dukaans’ suddenly disappeared from their corners, though soft drinks and tetrapaks were available.   Delay, Scarcity  Maharashtra LPG Dealers Association President Deepak Singh yesterday conceded to “some delays due to supply shortages” of commercial cylinders, but assured that there is no scarcity of domestic cylinders.   “We are adhering to the Centre’s guidelines for a 25 days booking period between 2 cylinders (domestic). The issue is with commercial cylinders but even those are available though less in numbers,” said Singh, adding that guidelines to prioritise educational institutions, hospitals, and defence, are being followed, but others are also getting their supplies.   Despite the assurances, Shetty said that the current status is extremely serious since the past week and the intermittent disruptions have escalated into a near-total halt in supplies in many regions since Monday.   Adding to the dismal picture is the likelihood of local hoteliers associations in different cities like Pune, Palghar, Nagpur, Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, and more resorting to tough measures from Thursday, including temporary shutdown of their outlets, which have run out of gas stocks.

Broken Trust

Updated: Feb 18, 2025

Had he been alive, George Fernandes, the firebrand socialist who championed the working class would have been appalled. The New India Cooperative Bank, founded under Fernandes’ aegis in 1968 to serve the common worker, lies in ruins after its general manager, Hitesh Mehta, was arrested for allegedly siphoning off Rs.122 crore. It is a bitter irony that a bank born out of socialist ideals has met a spectacularly capitalist demise, consumed by greed, mismanagement and regulatory apathy.


The bank, originally conceived to serve the working class, is now in shambles as depositors have been left stranded. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has stepped in, freezing withdrawals, halting lending and superseding the bank’s board for a year. The bank’s downfall is symptomatic of a broader rot in India’s cooperative banking sector where misgovernance, political interference and financial malpractice are rife.


The RBI has imposed a moratorium, preventing depositors from withdrawing their hard-earned money beyond the insurance limit of Rs. 5 lakh. Predictably, panic has set in with large queues of customers clamouring for answers. That a bank with its roots in labour activism should leave its depositors in such a predicament is particularly galling. The money was not lost to bad loans or economic downturns but was simply stolen from the vaults.


How did a bank built to serve the underprivileged reach such a sorry state? The answer lies in a mix of poor governance and regulatory lethargy. The New India Cooperative Bank, which started as the Bombay Labour Cooperative Bank, was meant to offer financial services to those shunned by commercial lenders. Over the years, however, it suffered from chronic mismanagement. Its financials have been deteriorating for years. The RBI’s decision to finally step in only followed after depositors’ money had vanished.


Over the past two decades, multiple cooperative banks across the country have collapsed under the weight of corruption and reckless lending. The parallels to the infamous Punjab and Maharashtra Co-operative (PMC) Bank scandals are striking in terms of regulatory lapses and unchecked fraud. The cooperative banking model, once heralded as a means to democratize finance, has long been compromised. In Maharashtra alone, dozens of cooperative banks have collapsed in the past decade, often due to political meddling. Many of these institutions are controlled by local politicians.


The fall of the New India Cooperative Bank must serve as a wake-up call. The RBI needs to enforce stricter audits, enhance transparency requirements and ensure that politically connected individuals do not treat these banks as slush funds. At a time when financial inclusion is a stated priority, India can ill afford to have institutions meant for the common man crumble under the weight of corruption and negligence. Fernandes envisioned a bank that would empower workers and give them a financial foothold. Instead, what remains is yet another cautionary tale of mismanagement and betrayal. Unless urgent reforms are undertaken, similar collapses will follow, leaving ordinary depositors to pay the price for the greed of the few.

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