Every one rupee slide against pound inflates my budget by Rs 20,000

Shubhashish started Project Hope early this year to bridge the Rs 8 lakh gap to finance his education

Imagine a product you have been meaning to buy for a long time. Something that is not a luxury but a necessity. It costs ?19 and you can’t afford it. You burn many a midnight oil in careful planning for raising this money. You take help from friends, family and strangers. Then one final day when you have successfully found the money, you go to the shop to buy only to find out that now it costs ?23. Now add five zeroes to the above mentioned figures.

 

This is the story of the rupee impact on my postgraduate plans.

 

 

Six months ago when I sat down to budget this MA plan I had to take a worst-case scenario. I took Rs 100 to a pound. In hindsight I feel like the best economist India never had!

 

Today, this nightmare of the rupee’s vertical fall has come true. Every time the pound gets dearer by a rupee, my budget gets inflated by Rs 20,000. In February, the exchange rate was around Rs 82 to a pound. Even if we take Rs 102 as the today’s rate, I lose Rs 20,000 on every 1,000 pounds. That is Rs 4 lakh on the minimum 20,000 pounds that I need. If I go in the exact calculation then this amount will go up to Rs 5 lakh but I refrain for the sake of my fragile heart.

 

It is not that I don't have this money. It is just that how the situation has turned so dramatically just in a matter of months. Four to be precise.

 

This increase pinches me more because I just don’t have the money for this MA programme in London. I started a crowdfunding initiative called Project Hope in January this year to find Rs 8 lakh to bridge the gap and make this education possible. I still can’t believe that I pulled it off and raised the money in four months’ time.

 

And since I crowdfunded Rs 8 lakh, this increase eats up 50% of my entire initiative. Not a small sum by any means.

 

People ask me what I am going to do now. I ask what option I have. Shall I drop the plan and hope that next year things might be better? Or shall I look at the bigger picture and decide that this increase, although substantial, in the larger scheme is just a blip. I rested on the latter.

 

Sometimes one needs to go by the gut feel and discard the economic tangent. And this is exactly what I am doing. Because, Hope.
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Shubhashish is a journalist who is now pursuing Masters in International Studies and Diplomacy in London
Email: shubhashish@msn.com