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

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

Ayodhya: Kingdom of Sorrows

T he Sarayu carried more tears than water. Ayodhya was a sad kingdom. Dasaratha was a good king. He upheld dharma – justice and morality – as best as he could. The citizens were apparently happy. Then, one day, it all changed. One person is enough to change the destiny of a whole kingdom. Who was that one person? Some say it was Kaikeyi, one of the three official wives of Dasaratha. Some others say it was Manthara, Kaikeyi’s chief maid. Manthara was a hunchback. She was the caretaker of Kaikeyi right from the latter’s childhood; foster mother, so to say, because Kaikeyi had no mother. The absence of maternal influence can distort a girl child’s personality. With a foster mother like Manthara, the distortion can be really bad. Manthara was cunning, selfish, and morally ambiguous. A severe physical deformity can make one worse than all that. Manthara was as devious and manipulative as a woman could be in a men’s world. Add to that all the jealousy and ambition that insecure peo...
39 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
16 comments
Read more

Liberated

Fiction - parable Vijay was familiar enough with soil and the stones it turns up to realise that he had struck something rare.   It was a tiny stone, a pitch black speck not larger than the tip of his little finger. It turned up from the intestine of the earth while Vijay was digging a pit for the biogas plant. Anand, the scientist from the village, got the stone analysed in his lab and assured, “It is a rare object.   A compound of carbonic acid and magnesium.” Anand and his fellow scientists believed that it must be a fragment of a meteoroid that hit the earth millions of years ago.   “Very rare indeed,” concluded the scientist. Now, it’s plain commonsense that something that’s very rare indeed must be very valuable too. All the more so if it came from the heavens. So Vijay got the village goldsmith to set it on a gold ring.   Vijay wore the ring proudly on his ring finger. Nobody, in the village, however bothered to pay any homage to Vijay’s...
47 comments
Read more

Bharata: The Ascetic King

Bharata is disillusioned yet again. His brother, Rama the ideal man, Maryada Purushottam , is making yet another grotesque demand. Sita Devi has to prove her purity now, years after the Agni Pariksha she arranged for herself long ago in Lanka itself. Now, when she has been living for years far away from Rama with her two sons Luva and Kusha in the paternal care of no less a saint than Valmiki himself! What has happened to Rama? Bharata sits on the bank of the Sarayu with tears welling up in his eyes. Give me an answer, Sarayu, he said. Sarayu accepted Bharata’s tears too. She was used to absorbing tears. How many times has Rama come and sat upon this very same bank and wept too? Life is sorrow, Sarayu muttered to Bharata. Even if you are royal descendants of divinity itself. Rama had brought the children Luva and Kusha to Ayodhya on the day of the Ashvamedha Yagna which he was conducting in order to reaffirm his sovereignty and legitimacy over his kingdom. He didn’t know they w...
30 comments
Read more

Dharma and Destiny

  Illustration by Copilot Designer Unwavering adherence to dharma causes much suffering in the Ramayana . Dharma can mean duty, righteousness, and moral order. There are many characters in the Ramayana who stick to their dharma as best as they can and cause much pain to themselves as well as others. Dasharatha sees it as his duty as a ruler (raja-dharma) to uphold truth and justice and hence has to fulfil the promise he made to Kaikeyi and send Rama into exile in spite of the anguish it causes him and many others. Rama accepts the order following his dharma as an obedient son. Sita follows her dharma as a wife and enters the forest along with her husband. The brotherly dharma of Lakshmana makes him leave his own wife and escort Rama and Sita. It’s all not that simple, however. Which dharma makes Rama suspect Sita’s purity, later in Lanka? Which dharma makes him succumb to a societal expectation instead of upholding his personal integrity, still later in Ayodhya? “You were car...
28 comments
Read more