Indians across the country protested a hike in fuel prices Thursday with schools and businesses shuttered and flights and trains canceled in worst-hit eastern India. The near-complete shutdown of West Bengal state in eastern India, called for by the state's ruling communist parties, was the most successful protest Thursday against increases in prices for gasoline, diesel and cooking gas ordered a day earlier by India's federal government. Prices for fuel increased about 11 percent in the capital, Delhi, and by varying amounts elsewhere. To help ease the burden on consumers, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called on states to lower their taxes. “It is incumbent upon state governments, many of whom tax petroleum products substantially, to also contribute to this national effort by suitably reducing state taxes and levies,” Singh said in an address to the nation Wednesday night. While West Bengal's strike cleared streets, emptied offices and closed schools, no violence was reported, said Raj Kanojia, the inspector-general of the state's police. There were also empty roads and closed shops in the southern state of Kerala, although rail and air traffic was not affected there, the Press Trust of India news agency reported. India's CNN-IBN television station also reported a protest in the central city of Indore organized by the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party, which also opposes the prices increases. Both Kerala and West Bengal are run by India's powerful communist parties, which provide the government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh with its parliamentary majority but have increasingly found themselves at odds with his administration. The communist parties said the protests would continue all week, and demanded the government further lower import duties on oil, which were partially cut Wednesday, rather than raise prices. The government's “decision to impose a huge burden on people, which it could have avoided, has compelled us to call a strike,” said Biman Bose, a top communist leader. Officials said the soaring price of oil forced them to raise fuel prices because the government was losing billions of dollars covering the losses of state
