My two cents on austerity

The recent euphoria over conserved lifestyle piqued my interest and goaded me to add my pennies on the austerity drive. Suddenly, people travelling by Business class shift to economy, economy to AC train, AC train to sleeper, sleeper to bus (and may be bus to walking barefoot as Shri devi did few days back).

Being Austere is like being hip or being in vogue. So don’t be surprised if you find Samosa’s and Pani Puri’s being offered at page three parties or to foreign delegates. A young congress MP was embarrassed while travelling in Business Class when he learned that Sonia Gandhi was travelling in economy class. In the end poor chap had to exchange his seat for a more Austere economy class seat alongside madam making him double guilty of buying a costlier ticket and travelling on a cheaper one.(I wonder that amounts to cheating and wastage of money. Anyways who cares.).

Another milestone yesterday was Rahul Gandhi travelling by Shatabdi express in another austerity drive. (Ignoring the fact that he had to reserve five seats including security). I wonder how does travelling in AC car in one of the better trains in India amounts to austerity when it’s a luxury to most of India.

Little commonsense tells you what must have happened. Party workers must have hoarded each station shouting “Rahul Gandhi ki Jai”, “Sonia Gandhi Zindabad” showering flowers on his coach supposedly to show their loyalty, causing inconvenience to hundreds of other passengers and wasting everyone’s time including there’s. It must have created considerable litter on our already gleaming railway stations. News is that somebody pelted the same coaches damaging the train. Security personnel’s must have been scanning complete railway tracks from Delhi to Ludhiana. What was the objective of this total exercise? Wouldn’t it be cheaper if he simply booked three airline tickets in economy class without creating a fuss?

Mind you I don’t blame Rahul Gandhi for this. I know his intentions were good but the execution was crap. If he was sincere in his efforts of cost cutting he should have kept the journey under wraps and probably announced it after it was over. This was more of a publicity stunt than austerity effort. If it is some plan of government to increase money circulation in economy and employment generation then its fine otherwise the medicine is proving costlier than the disease.

Why not keep all of the MP’s in a single five star hotel and keep an army to guard all of them rather than wasting resources on each of them. When Lalu was railway minister he had 100+ policemen guarding his Delhi residence that too in one of the safest areas of Delhi. Even if you pay 10000 to each of them (minimum) your security bill itself turns out to be 10 lacs per month. I am sure it must be many times more than that. If this is for one ministry I shudder to think about all of them together. And they say India is poor.

When Shashi Tharoor is paying his five star bills from his pocket (which he is completely capable of) why should anyone have a problem? I don’t think there must be a huge difference between a monthly five star bills and total cost of keeping a MP in huge bungalows considering the cost of security, caretakers involved. Rather than being superficially austere MP’s should consider being practically economical. This is all we are asking.