Millennials can't meme and shame like Gen Z do. Will govt hear their ethanol pain?

The government just proved it can hear. It also proved what it takes to make it listen, and that should worry the quiet working man at the petrol pump wondering just how much petrol is in the petrol he is paying for.The quietest protest is at the petrol pump, where millions wonder how much petrol is left in the petrol they pay for. (Image: PTI)On Saturday, the Union government surrendered to a cockroach.Not the insect, though the mascot was inspired, since a cockroach is the one creature you cannot stamp out by stamping on it. The Cockroach Janta Party began as a slur reclaimed, born when the Chief Justice was widely taken to have likened (he didn't) restless young Indians to vermin, and the young decided to wear the insult as a badge. Within weeks, the two-month-old joke had more Instagram followers than the ruling party itself, a meme army that turned a lathi charge into a reel and tear-gas cloud into content. They out-Modi-ed Modi on the very social media he built his brand on. They posted diapers to the Education Minister to help him plug the leaks. They called it Instagramming their revolution, and they were not wrong.For weeks, the government did the one thing it does best with the vocal unarmed: nothing. Then, on July 20, the students marched towards Parliament, and the state answered with force. Government "sources" swore on Friday evening that Dharmendra Pradhan would not move. By Saturday afternoon, he was gone.There is a lesson in that, and it is not about NEET. A deaf government is not a strong one. It is the only one that has not yet been made to listen. But notice what made it listen. Not the justice of the cause, which had not changed in weeks. Only the volume. This government is consistent. It does not weigh whether you are right. It weighs whether you can last and whether you can hurt. Shaheen Bagh sat through a Delhi winter, and the talk of a nationwide NRC quietly slid into cold storage, something nobody in power mentions any more. The farmers sat at the capital's gates for over a year, and three farm laws, defended with economics every bit as confident as any ethanol forex savings chart, were repealed with a rare prime-ministerial apology to the nation. And when the Supreme Court once rationalised the SC/ST Atrocities Act and a violent bandh erupted across the north, the government did not hold the line. It passed an amendment that made the Act Draconian, overruling the judges within months.Read those three together and the pattern is clear: the decibels decide, merit gaya ethanol lene. The establishment ignores what it can afford to ignore and folds before what it has learnt to fear. It waves away the meek and the mannerly, however honest, and bends to the persistent and the violent, however unreasonable. That is classic bully behaviour. And every citizen has now read it. Which brings us to the quietest queue of all: the average bike and car owner at the petrol pump.He has none of the Cockroach flair. He has a job to reach, in the very vehicle he is worried about, which is precisely why he cannot camp at Jantar Mantar for a month to complain about it. He is the working Indian, salaried or self-employed, the man who saved for a second-hand hatchback and now suspects it is drinking more and going less. He has no viral following. He has a grievance, and it is real. And by the government's own revealed rule, he will be ignored, for the unforgivable crime of being polite and productive.Worse, the little he does say has been met with the Gadkari-Puri method: answer with a figure and call them technically ignorant. For months, the two ministers have replied to social media complaints with interviews and speeches about foreign exchange savings and income of farmers. Always, meant to end the conversation. A citizen expects communication, but he is lectured about the nutrition label while he keeps saying the food tastes off.Here is the awkward part: on the numbers, the government is right. India buys crude in quantities that cost lakhs of crores a year. Ethanol is a solution to the problem of rising import bills. By the government's own factsheet, blending has saved over Rs 1.90 lakh crore in foreign exchange since 2014-15 and substituted 310 lakh tonnes of imported crude. It has put more than Rs 1.6 lakh crore into farmers' hands, we don't know how, but let's believe the Modinomics. When crude sits around $70 a barrel, ethanol is actually the dearer liquid, which tells you the point was never a cheaper litre. The point was a steadier country, less exposed to a tanker that gets stuck, a strait that gets tense, a war that gets closer. That is not a small thing to buy with your own sugarcane and excess grain.So the case is good. The confession is missing. And the confession is the whole job now.The honest sentence the government keeps avoiding is this: we reached the destination before we told you. The 20% target was first pencilled in for 2030, then yanked to 2025, then to 2023, each advance announced as a triumph of ambition. Ambition is admirable in a leader and alarming in a policy that fuels the common man's life. Vehicles built to run on E20 comfortably have only rolled out in real numbers since about 2023. Everything older, which is most of what is parked outside most homes, was tuned for a leaner mix. Feed it E20 and you get a mileage dip, 6 to 12% depending on who is counting, and, in time, older gaskets and hoses meeting a fuel that attracts moisture. The petrol pumps were not ready. Outside major cities, fuel adulteration was a business. Now the crooks had an excuse.Moving fast on ethanol was a fair call. Moving fast while the road wasn't paved yet was not. The country forgives a government in a hurry. It resents one that pretends we are imagining the potholes. The country has forgiven paper leaks, but dismissing the demand for a consequence had a consequence. Now the minister is gone, and remedial measures are on the fast track.If the pivot is more grammar than chemistry, say it plainly. Without the sugarcoat: we went ahead of the curve on purpose, because the maths of energy security demanded it, and we accept that we asked older engines to suffer the blend before the fleet caught up. Then do three things that turn this admission into a plan.First, park it at E20 for now. The climb to E30 by 2030 can wait in the pit lane. You do not raise the dose while the patient is still complaining about the last one's side effects.Second, bring back E10 as a choice, especially for the older cars built for it. Brazil lets drivers pick their blend. The United States lets drivers pick their blend. Choice at the pump is not a retreat from the policy. It is the policy, with manners, because the grownups can't sing along expletive-laden slogans and make viral memes with insulting themes.Third, promise the higher blends only when the fleet is genuinely ready, and mean it as a milestone, not a countdown. Let the cars catch up to the fuel, rather than the fuel racing off and leave the cars to follow.There is a tool in every carpenter's kit called a spirit level, a little tube of liquid whose bubble tells you, honestly, whether the thing you built stands straight or leans on a lie. The ethanol programme is a good build sitting on a crooked story. The bubble is off-centre, and everyone at the pump can see it, no matter what the surface transport minister says on the surface and the petroleum minister under it.The young just taught this government that it can hear, once the noise is loud enough. The real test is whether it can hear the reasonable before it is forced to fear the unreasonable, whether the polite man whose engine has begun to knock must first learn to be loud, or worse, before anyone in power turns around. A country runs a long way on the truth. It will not run a single kilometre on being told, one more time, that all izz well.- EndsPublished By: Sushim MukulPublished On: Jul 26, 2026 14:36 IST