India’s opposition parties are gearing up for a national strike to
protest the government’s move to hike fuel prices, putting pressure on
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s coalition before the next parliament’s
session.

Last Friday’s hikes in petrol, diesel and kerosene
were seen as a bold reform with which to attack India’s fiscal deficit
and that also play well at the G20 summit in Toronto, which has urged
the phasing out of fossil fuel subsidies.

Opposition parties —
and members of Singh’s coalition — have slammed the hike as an attack
on people’s pockets. The main opposition Hindu nationalist Bharatiya
Janata Party (BJP) is coordinating a strike with smaller, regional
parties.

“A nationwide strike is on the cards,” Prakash
Javdekar, a spokesperson for the BJP told Reuters, without saying when
such as a strike could take place.

Opposition parties, though,
are divided on many issues and may face obstacles in uniting against the
government.

Adjusting fuel prices to market rates could also
stoke headline inflation that is already in double digits, and could
spell trouble for Singh’s government trying to pass bills in the next
session of parliament in July.

Singh’s Congress party-led
government comfortably fended off a challenge to its rule in a
parliamentary vote in April over tax rises in the budget.

But
efforts to push bills, including one which is crucial to a civilian
nuclear deal with the United States, have been blocked by opposition
protests and unruly allies.

The CPI(M), India’s biggest
Communist party, told Reuters it will take also “mass action” but has
not decided whether it will join an India-wide strike.

“Politically,
the Congress is saying that double-digit inflation will have to be
tolerated in the short run. It is this line of thinking that has
emboldened the (government) to raise oil prices,” the Financial Express
wrote in an editorial on Monday.