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New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi has urged citizens to reduce fuel consumption, carpool, use public transport, work from home, “use less cooking oil” and limit non-essential foreign travel “for a year”. Government sources linked his appeal to ongoing tensions in West Asia that could disrupt oil supplies and raise import costs.

The timing of this call for national sacrifice again reveals deep political expediency which has characterised Modi’s political leadership. He waited until the conclusion of the 2026 assembly elections in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu to announce these austerity measures. During the high voltage election campaign, the Modi government made no mention of the impending economic crisis or the need for fuel conservation. His party’s political machinery utilised massive resources and fuel for rallies while ignoring the sharply deteriorating forex reserves.

Now that the voting is over, does the Modi government expect the public to adopt work-from-home models and limit travel to compensate for its financial failures and inability to plan ahead? Critics say this represents a cynical approach to governance where the burden of economic mismanagement is only shared with the public once political power is captured by extravagant use of state resources.

The government is continuing with expensive central projects and political spectacles, road shows that immediately followed Modi’s speech, with multiple SUVs in convoys to make party-political points while demanding that the common citizen reduce their basic consumption. Ministers and officials will continue foreign travel, and no binding measures enforce work-from-home across public or private sectors. Modi himself has not curtailed high-profile international engagements or government extravagance.

Prime Minister Sh Narendra Modi advises to skip foreign travel… it should start from the top… here attached story on ministers prompted then PM Dr Manmohan Singh to write his ministers to curtail foreign travel expenses, and........

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