Skip to main content

Christmas Gift

Courtesy: Joshi Daniel



More than a century and a half ago, Charles Dickens converted selfish Scrooge into a compassionate human being on the Christmas Day.  Today’s Indian Scrooges have awarded themselves a gargantuan pay hike on the occasion of Christmas which has already been converted into Good Governance Day. 

Our MPs have decided to double their salary.  If the proposal is approved (it will be), each MP will take home Rs 280,000 every month as their salary.  Plus all the freebies whose cost will run into lakhs of rupees.  Plus a doubled pension.  When the vast majority of Indians who slog their entire life for pittances will retire in their old age with no benefits such as pensions, an MP who may serve a term of a few months or 5 years at the most will enjoy a monthly pension that is higher than the annual income of many families in the country.

Democracy has been strengthened, mocks a cartoon in today’s Malayala Manorama referring to the MPs’ pay hike. 

Are these the achche din promised by the Modi government?

According to the India Rural Development Report 2013-14, poverty among marginalized groups in is pathetically high. About 45 per cent of Scheduled Tribes and 31 per cent of Scheduled Castes in rural areas are struggling to make both ends meet.  More than half the SCs in the rural Bihar are still fighting poverty — the highest among states at 51.67 per cent. In Chhattisgarh, 48.19 per cent of SCs were poor, while in Madhya Pradesh, Odisha and Uttar Pradesh, the figure was around 41 per cent. The all-India figure was 31.52 per cent, according to that report.

Courtesy: The Telegraph
We don’t need such reports to understand poverty.  Take a walk in the countryside and anyone will realise that all the promises about development and achche din were hollow dreams.   Except for the privileged sections whose benefits are looked after by the MPs along with their own.  And who will pay for their privileges?  The answer is the Christmas gift for the majority of Indians!




Labels:

Comments

  1. KalpanaDecember 25, 2015 at 12:28 PM

    This is just another heartbreaking development in a string of measures letting down the people these politicians have pledged to serve. Don't they have a conscience?

    ReplyDelete
  2. CifarDecember 25, 2015 at 1:29 PM

    If politicians need to pay their bills 90% of them stop contesting elections, any ways Merry Christmas

    My Christmas Day poem : Christmas Day

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalDecember 25, 2015 at 2:23 PM

      Merry Christmas to you too.

      Politicians are a rare breed.
      They are fattening themselves with the blood of the common man.

      Delete
  3. Kokila guptaDecember 25, 2015 at 3:26 PM

    Indeed a rare breed having traits of shamelessness, savagery, cruelty and gluttony . Now ,what else to expect ?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalDecember 25, 2015 at 4:50 PM

      The real tragedy is that we have come to accept that as normal politics. Otherwise how can this sort of a thing happen in a democracy?

      Delete
  4. RakeshDecember 25, 2015 at 10:29 PM

    'Good Governance' indeed!

    A very apt comparison to Mr Scrooge. Compared to these miserable characters, that arch miser seems a saint. Politics isn't a service anymore. It's just a profession now. Sad!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalDecember 26, 2015 at 7:12 AM

      Sad indeed especially since there is no sign of even a single leader who has some vision for the country.

      Delete
    2. RakeshDecember 26, 2015 at 8:48 PM

      Agreed, sir.

      Delete
  5. Titas BiswasDecember 26, 2015 at 11:44 AM

    I am not sure if to say something more.Everybody knows why he is where he is today,because of the corporate world.Their mutual love for each other is not a very hard thing to figure out,either."Achchhe din" are coming closer,indeed...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalDecember 26, 2015 at 12:44 PM

      https://www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pressreleases/2015-01-19/richest-1-will-own-more-all-rest-2016

      The old 20:80 ratio - 20% owning 80% wealth - is all set to become 1:99, thanks to the nexus between the corporate world and politics (+ godmen, in India).
      L

      Delete
  6. UnknownDecember 27, 2015 at 6:02 PM

    Sir indeed this situation bound us to think that our leaders are selfish and they are least bothered about needs of a common man.but there are few ones who are dedicated to national interest. What is the remedy sir. Any way merry Christmas sir.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalDecember 27, 2015 at 9:39 PM

      Merry Christmas to you too, sir.

      The only remedy is people becoming aware of the real situation. We allow ourselves to be duped by the politicians who make use of religious sentiments to conceal their ulterior motives. They are selling our lands, water, and even the air we breathe, to traders and keeping us blind with red herrings like culture, gods, and so on. We should see through their games.

      Delete
  7. desi TravelerDecember 28, 2015 at 3:16 PM

    Janta ka sewak... as they call themselves... what a joke... and this when most of the bills are pending for months due to stalling of proceedings in Parliament

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalDecember 28, 2015 at 3:53 PM

      Our Jan sewaks have always been very quick in ensuring their own welfare and benefits.

      Delete
  8. UnknownDecember 29, 2015 at 4:50 PM

    You have related chalk with cheese. For a more informed debate and legislations in future our MPs should get more salaries. Donot paint everyone with the same brush please. It is the unaccounted wealth that is increasing and measures need to be taken reign that in not arch your eyebrows in surprise. Poverty and salary are things which need more in depth articles. Please try visiting PRS website for more information. Raise the debate from pedestrian levels to an informed one. go through the bills that became acts this year. the debates and the changes that came in the functioning of parliament. you will definitely change your views fur sure !!

    Change your perspective. try to be optimistic. I look at things from a glass is half full perspective.

    ReplyDelete
  9. UnknownDecember 30, 2015 at 8:31 AM

    Please go through the following post. Find some time and read atleast the "Mukkal Bhagam" of the post. You will get an idea about whats happening in our country now : https://gangsofedathua.wordpress.com/2014/01/02/the-buck-stops-here/

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Ghost of a Banyan Tree

  Image from here Fiction Jaichander Varma could not sleep. It was past midnight and the world outside Jaichander Varma’s room was fairly quiet because he lived sufficiently far away from the city. Though that entailed a tedious journey to his work and back, Mr Varma was happy with his residence because it afforded him the luxury of peaceful and pure air. The city is good, no doubt. Especially after Mr Modi became the Prime Minister, the city was the best place with so much vikas. ‘Where’s vikas?’ Someone asked Mr Varma once. Mr Varma was offended. ‘You’re a bloody antinational mussalman who should be living in Pakistan ya kabristan,’ Mr Varma told him bluntly. Mr Varma was a proud Indian which means he was a Hindu Brahmin. He believed that all others – that is, non-Brahmins – should go to their respective countries of belonging. All Muslims should go to Pakistan and Christians to Rome (or is it Italy? Whatever. Get out of Bharat Mata, that’s all.) The lower caste Hindus co...
121 comments
Read more

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
44 comments
Read more

Tanishq and the Patriots

Patriots are a queer lot. You don’t know what all things can make them pick up the gun. Only one thing is certain apparently: the gun for anything. When the neighbouring country behaves like a hoard of bandicoots digging into our national borders, we will naturally take up the gun. But nowadays we choose to redraw certain lines on the map and then proclaim that not an inch of land has been lost. On the other hand, when a jewellery company brings out an ad promoting harmony between the majority and the minority populations, our patriots take up the gun. And shoot down the ad. Those who promote communal harmony are traitors in India today. The sacred duty of the genuine Indian patriot is to hate certain communities, rape their women, plunder their land, deny them education and other fundamental rights and basic requirements. Tanishq withdrew the ad that sought to promote communal harmony. The patriot’s gun won. Aapka Bharat Mahan. In the novel Black Hole which I’m writing there is...
61 comments
Read more

Romance in Utopia

Book Review Title: My Haven Author: Ruchi Chandra Verma Pages: 161 T his little novel is a surfeit of sugar and honey. All the characters that matter are young employees of an IT firm in Bengaluru. One of them, Pihu, 23 years and all too sweet and soft, falls in love with her senior colleague, Aditya. The love is sweetly reciprocated too. The colleagues are all happy, furthermore. No jealousy, no rivalry, nothing that disturbs the utopian equilibrium that the author has created in the novel. What would love be like in a utopia? First of all, there would be no fear or insecurity. No fear of betrayal, jealousy, heartbreak… Emotional security is an essential part of any utopia. There would be complete trust between partners, without the need for games or power struggles. Every relationship would be built on deep understanding, where partners complement each other perfectly. Miscommunication and misunderstanding would be rare or non-existent, as people would have heightened emo...
9 comments
Read more

A Lesson from Little Prince

I joined the #WriteAPageADay challenge of Blogchatter , as I mentioned earlier in another post. I haven’t succeeded in writing a page every day, though. But as long as you manage to write a minimum of 10,000 words in the month of Feb, Blogchatter is contented. I woke up this morning feeling rather vacant in the head, which happens sometimes. Whenever that happens to me but I do want to get on with what I should, I fall back on a book that has inspired me. One such book is Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s The Little Prince . I have wished time and again to meet Little Prince in person as the narrator of his story did. We might have interesting conversations like the ones that exist in the novel. If a sheep eats shrubs, will he also eat flowers? That is one of the questions raised by Little Prince [LP]. “A sheep eats whatever he meets,” the narrator answers. “Even flowers that have thorns?” LP is interested in the rose he has on his tiny planet. When he is told that the sheep will eat f...
8 comments
Read more