Last week’s Oil Workers Strike has not only been one of the many harrowing experiences in an average Indian’s life but it has also given all of us a morbid glimpse of the possibility of a future without fuel.

While my dad was scouting the neighborhood petrol pumps for a refuel, I sat at home wondering, what if we hadn’t gone to the mall the weekend before, to waste all those hours doing nothing but plain window-shopping. We could have spent same amount of time at home doing something worthwhile and more importantly, saved those couple of litres of fuel.

Why is it that man regrets his actions only after he suffers the consequences even though many a time he is aware of the outcome. Luckily my regret was soon doused by the joy brought to me by the fact that the strike ended the next day.

This was just a temporary crisis. But what will happen when we are faced with the bigger crisis, the oil depletion crisis. Predictions state that oil reserves will never be depleted, but that is only after taking into account the rise in usage of alternative sources of energy and the possibility of finding new ‘future’ fuels.

So the question is – Is India capable of developing alternative/non-conventional sources of energy to such an extent that our dependence on oil becomes negligible?

It would be a great to know your opinions and ideas on the issue.

It is very easy to put yourself in your comfortable bathroom slippers and tell yourself “I cannot make a difference” or “I do not matter”. I did think the same way until yesterday. I happened to land up in a Israel-Palestine conflict talk, about how the youth can actually make a difference in the world. Trust me, this wasn’t planned because I am the first person to back out of anything to do with protesting or taking a stand in a war, and also the fact that Arab political problems do not bother me. I actually went there for socializing!

It was going out to be a half an hour discussion. But eventually turned out to be a 2 hour hardtalk. All I can recall is the angry youngster, who I thought was insane, yelling at everybody and trying to make a point. (Turns out that he speaks on Al-Jazeera very often!). And also that I did not understand the half the conversation. But the one thing I learnt at the end of it was that if us, educated youth from different countries, do not stand up for human rights or try to protest or make a difference, no one will. At the end of the day, our voice will not be lost in the noise around us. It will be heard and will matter! But that’s if we go together. One person will fail drastically, if he doesn’t have hundred’s by him to support the cause. United we stand, divided we fall makes a lot of sense to me here.