Need a Mahatma Gandhi to fix the oil crisis

This is a question that has crossed our minds often: How would Mahatma Gandhi have reacted if he was around when oil prices were nudging $150 barrel? Quite clearly, his response would have been markedly different from the likes of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh or the extremely conservative Congress president, Sonia Gandhi. He would not have reacted like US President George W Bush and suggested drilling in high seas. He would not have shown his rage like the OPEC leaders, who have claimed that future traders are trying to take control of the pricing of oil away from them. He would have done things very differently. Mahatma Gandhi's biographer Loius Fischer provided ample indication about how he would have gone about it. His greatness, she says, "lay in doing what every one could do but doesn't". And the great man would have done what we all know: Show the world that Indians can do what the consumerist West would blanche even thinking about - cut down consumption. He would have used this as an opportunity to politically mobilise millions of people reeling under high fuel and food prices and hit at all those entities that are deepening their misery. Gandhi would have identified the causes behind the spiraling oil prices and its consequent impact on food and other commodities. He would have campaigned relentlessly against the militaristic policies of the US and how it is contributing to creating such a gargantuan fuel crisis.