are being wasteful. Gee! What a relief!
The last few times Tamilnadu Deputy Chief Minister Stalin visited a
little town called Erode in Tamilnadu, streets were decorated with
tube lights for kilometres, while the ordinary residents of the town
have had to endure a daily two hour power cut for a long time, and
posters and cut outs of enormous size and variety were on display all
along the route he travelled in. Traffic was diverted from the
arterial roads onto little roads that led to jams and delays and an
enormous loss of productivity resulted for the whole town! We can
safely estimate total losses and wasted expenditure to be no less than
Rs. 10 lakhs. This is just one day in the life of one of our
politicians who is not even a heavy hitter on the national scene.
We can also safely assume that Stalin alone has at the very least
fifty such days in a year, and so we're burning Rs. 5 crore for
absolutely nothing gained. (He doesn't even say anything profound or
accidentally drop any pearls of wisdom). Let's look at 25 states and
assume that only one politician in each state burns money like this,
even though there must be a much higher number out there. That's 125
crores burnt for nothing. The last elections cost an estimated Rs.
10,000 crore. Mayawati's beautification fiasco runs into figures well
over Rs. 100 crore. while she is begging for money from the centre to
fight drought.
But, we've got to have AUSTERITY! Hooray! SM Krishna decides to
travel economy on his trip to Belarus and Turkmenistan, going abroad
with only 3 members not 12. I suppose with an air ticket to Belarus
costing about Rs. 40,000 at the most, that saves the government about
Rs. 4.5 lakhs! Consider that a fair amount of this money could have
gone to the beleaguered Air India, which is really money going from
one pocket of the government to another, and it is essentially nothing
saved.
Who are we kidding here with this Austerity Drive? Today we have
Sonia Gandhi travelling economy class on Air India. According to CNN
IBN's own estimate, the total saving, including having to reserve 15
seats, keeping the seat next to her free, and all the other nonsense
that goes with her travel, the total savings is Rs. 10,000! The
Special Protection Group just makes sure they add to every travel
expense of every politician at this level. Again, when she is
travelling Air India, isn't this government to government billing?
What the heck is all the fuss about?
Fundamentally, with all the nonsense about India being an IT power, it
should be relatively easy to set up a robust video conferencing
facility between anyone and anyone else in the world today. Throw in
encryption and you have privacy, secrecy if you like to call it that.
So, why should anybody travel at all for a stupid face to face meeting
with anyone else? Isn't this the question that we should be asking at
this juncture?
If companies can carry on regular year round business using the
internet, why can't our politicians use these technologies for a few
days with each country? It will save an enormous amount of money by
completely eliminating all the fuss involved with VIP travel - flying,
hospitality, security, insurance, logistics, and medical emergency
arrangements.
Almost all our politicians have assets well beyond their legal means
of earning. Is there any austerity there? Absolutely not. For
example, there are corruption cases against Mulayam Singh Yadav and
Mayawati running into several crores of rupees. The figures allegedly
put away by some of our other politicians are staggering. No
austerity there. How else would we spend Rs. 10,000 crore on a single
election? That money is not even accounted for! So please, spare us
this hogwash about austerity. We want you monkeys to be efficient,
not austere. Get your butts off your cushions and get to work.
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