a feeling this austerity nonsense would fade out and it has.
Rahul Gandhi's famous train journey was marred by an incident of stone
throwing, now thought of as probably being perpetrated by "kids". I'm
sure it takes the CBI, the RAW, the Railway Protection Force, and the
Special Protection Group a very long time to figure out the exact
details on who threw stones at the train Rahul Gandhi was in. It's
such a sad day for democracy when one of our representatives goes on
an austerity drive and gets treated like this. It is also a sad day
when kids are chosen for such terrorist attacks on unsuspecting
politicians.
MK Azhagiri and one of his cohorts chose to travel by economy class
instead of business class on a flight from Chennai to Delhi. I'm sure
this is remarkable, considering the plane consumes 40% lesser fuel
when two people move their butts from business class to economy class.
If they moved lower to the luggage hold, or even better, get thrown
out of the plane, it would lower the consumption even more I'm sure!
But austerity cannot be taken to such low levels, can it?
Who pays for a public servant flying on official duty? Surely it must
be the Government. Air India and Indian are both government owned and
operated companies, and so is the Indian Railways that Mr. Rahul
Gandhi is suddenly a patron of. So, who is actually "paying" less or
more? This is all internal government "billing". Just numbers on
paper, signatures to settle accounts, nothing going in, nothing coming
out of any pocket. So, what exactly are we saving? An eight hour
train journey instead of a one hour flight? That sounds like a loss
of productivity to me, nothing else. Security through two crowded
railway stations must be harder and more expensive to provide than
through two airports, but then, that is also government resource.
Lies, however, are a politician's resource and there seems to be
plenty where all this comes from.
Whenever a minister from one of the smaller constituences goes to the
capital, especially in Tamilnadu, a whole force of white clad "cadre"
of party workers accompanies the minister to the railway station,
looking very important and purposeful, but riding up and down in cars
just to send off one person. This entourage must cost money, and it
certainly causes a nuisance in public space. Imagine if every
passenger descended on the station with fifty followers to send them
off!
In all seriousness, it seems our politicians need lessons in
austerity. So let's cut their benefits and expense accounts. That
will make some difference to the treasuries, and the fact that they
will use their phones less and travel less will also mean that they
will sit in their seats more. That means they will have to put in
more hours if not more work, which is a good thing. At the very
least, they will be a little more available where they should be - at
their offices.
Without a sliver of a doubt, the Austerity Drive is not an eyewash.
Our eyes have tar, wool, and dung slapped riight on and should any
sight manage to sneak through, we have clouds around them. They
cannot be washed. They have to be excavated back to life. Let's get
adults to stone trains on Rahul's next trip.
The fact that baffles me most is how little our government mechanism
takes advantage of the technologies that we proudly trumpet - computer
science, information, telecom, remote sensing, you name it, we've got
it. And yet, our bureaucrats and politicians fly to another city to
attend a meeting, sometimes for just an hour or so, and then fly right
back the same day. What is stopping them from using a video
conferencing facility from their own gleaming unused laptops? If I
can chat face to face with my friends in the USA from a small town in
Tamilnadu, see their kids growing up, share files and audio and video,
and collaborate on projects, what is stopping our stupid politicians
from doing that?
If they're too stupid to do this, they need to be educated. Unless
the need for physical contact is immense, as in having sex, there
should be absolutely no need for anyone to travel to have a talk. I
would say the same thing of huge summits like the clowning that is
going on in Copenhagen right now. The whole summit is eco unfriendly
to the nth degree. So many countries, so many delegates, travelling,
their entourages, their laundry, their hotels, the food, the security,
the local transportation, for what? Just so that they can all be in
the same time zone physically? What could be more absurd in the 21st
century?
The "common man" has long since started taking advantage of
technologies to simplify his life. There are 59 crore cell phones in
India standing as proof for this simple fact. The politicians and
bureaucrats that claim to work for the well being of this common man
are the jokers that haven't got it yet. Time for a public interest
litigation.
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