A dominant characteristic of the reviled species politicus indicus (Indian politician), more responsible than any other class or profession for sabotaging the perfectly legitimate dreams and aspirations of two generations of post-independence Indians, is that no luxury or facility is unaffordable for them, never mind the inconvenient truth that the country they chronically (mis)govern is rock-bottom poor, with over 700 million citizens (according to the Arjun Sengupta Committee’s report made public earlier this year) eking out miserable lives on Rs.20 ($ 0.45) per day.
Sprawling bungalows with acres of garden, retinues of servants, platoons of security guards, motor cavalcades and free telephones and travel apart, the latest political perquisite is custom-built jet aircraft for political netas who have never proved increased productivity or contribution to the public weal. On August 2, the first of three wide-bodied VVIP Boeing Business Jets touched down at Delhi’s Palam airport to join the Indian Air Force’s elite Communications Squadron. Two similar business jets ordered by the Union government in 2005 at an aggregate price of Rs.937 crore are scheduled to join the Communications Squadron in October. Among the features of these aircraft: sophisticated self-protection suites, encrypted satellite communications facilities, an executive office, a bedroom and accommodation for 50 guests.
Following liberalisation of the Indian economy in 1991, more than a dozen India-based airlines offering luxurious first-class travel facilities are available to already over-pampered Indian politicians. Therefore this over-the-top expenditure on uber-luxury private jets is wholly unwarranted. According to this publication’s calculations (EW April 2008), the opportunity cost of Rs.937 crore is a mix of 15,600 laboratories, 31,200 libraries and 124,000 lavatories in pathetically ill-equipped government primary schools. The public interest demands that the order for the remaining two customised business jets is cancelled forthwith, and the savings deployed to build primary school infrastructure. Social justice must not only be done, it must also seen to be done.
Feeding frenzy
If anyone entertained any doubts that the first charge on the huge amount of Rs.403,872 crore collected annually by the Central government by way of a plethora of taxes and levies imposed upon lay citizens, is of the country’s neta-babu class, they are likely to be dispelled by New Delhi’s enhancement of the already over-generous award of the Sixth Pay Commission to the Central government’s massive 5 million strong employees. In March the Sixth Pay Commission recommended an average 40 percent increase in total payout to government servants aggregating Rs.12,561 crore — a handsome increment, given that their emoluments are completely divorced from productivity.
Nevertheless, ignoring these ground realities and unmindful of the “folklore of corruption” which has made the Indian bureaucracy infamous around the world, on August 14, the bleeding heart Congress-led UPA coalition government in New Delhi hiked the pay commission’s award for Central government, Indian Railways and defence personnel by another 21 percent. As such, the monthly pay packet of the junior most Central government employee is now Rs.10,000 per month, and of top-ranked secretaries to the government Rs.80,000. Nor is that the sum and substance of New Delhi’s magnanimity towards their comrades in arms. The new pay scales have been made effective from January 1, 2006 and require the Centre to pay Rs.29,373 crore as back wages (in two installments), in addition to a Rs.17,798 crore annual payout being added to the expenditure side of the Union budget. Now brace yourself for parity emolument demands from 14 million state government employees.
This massive cash infusion into the hands of 19 million government employees at a time when the wholesale price index is riding 12.44 percent higher than at the same time last year, is certain to defeat New Delhi’s pusillanimous efforts to rein in inflation. Neither members of the Sixth Pay Commission nor the government seem to have learned any lessons from the fallout of the huge 30 percent pay hike mandated by the Fifth Pay Commission in 1997, when a runaway inflation current surged through the economy throwing the finances of state governments in particular, out of kilter and smoothing the electoral way for the induction of the country’s first BJP-led government.
Now with the country’s me-first neta-babu conspiracy engaged in a feeding frenzy at the public trough, history is about to repeat itself.
Rustics revenge
A socio-economic phenomenon, perhaps best described as rural India’s revenge, is manifesting itself in the garbage — sorry garden — city of Bangalore, vaingloriously equated with Silicon Valley, USA.
A conspicuous failure to apply the most elementary nostrums of civic planning by engineering the growth of B class towns and cities, and the coterminous neglect of rural India, has prompted continuous distress migration of millions of villagers into state capitals countrywide. Bangalore has been particularly hard hit by this phenomenon, with its population quadrupling from 2 million in the mid-1980s to almost 8 million currently. And with first-generation city dwellers now constituting a majority, they are increasingly electing political representatives given to imposing the norms of village India, on the civil service and police.
The fallout of continuous rural migration into Bangalore is not only the import of the vicious caste politics and corruption of village India, which has transformed this once-garden city into a chaotic traffic-choked garbage-strewn metropolis, but also its conversion into a ghost town after sunset. Unfamiliar with the basic grammar of police work — which is to apprehend criminals after the fact rather than prevent crime — successive police commissioners have killed the city’s once vibrant night life. Following village norms, rustics in uniform have forced bars and restaurants to close at 11.30 p.m, banned live music as well as discotheques and ‘live bands’ with both police chiefs and their rural-mindset political masters ignorant about the huge revenue loss (excise, sales, entertainment and luxury taxes) being suffered by the cash-strapped state government as a consequence.
The law of unintended consequences has transformed India’s 24x7 IT (information technology) capital into a post-sunset ghost town. That’s rural India’s revenge.