2015_06_07_BusinessInsider_Everyone’s worried about subsidy
Oh yes, we’re all worried about our LPG subsidy. Will the government’s ad blitz finally convince us all to give it up or will our will to hold on to small benefits be the ultimate victor? When I asked Specky, my wife, she smiled and replied, ‘The important question is if giving up our LPG subsidy entitles us to brag about our sacrifice on Facebook, Twitter, and all the other social media platforms?’ Well, her perception isn’t entirely wrong, considering that even our PM loves to upload loads of selfies that seem to give him a positive projection.
Life is all about projections indeed. Look at our politicians. They love to have the entire country weep for their state of poverty. So they wail, they whine, and they grovel until they’re allowed to get together and howl for a raise in their pay package or another allowance or yet another subsidy for themselves. They are, after all, the brains behind all the complex legislation that is planned for every parliamentary or assembly session. It is a different matter that the opposition never allows sessions or blocks legislations or they themselves make sure that the right laws remain dormant. It isn’t their fault that the economy of the country is in a perpetual state of coma though they insist that it dreams of a great spike in growth. Dreams matter because it is their job to sell dreams.
The government dreams of boosting their reserves by making the common man give up his LPG subsidy. Do they forget that even the common man now dreams of seeing his MP or MLA give up their subsidies… well, at least a few if not all from a large list that includes cars, petrol, housing, electricity, telephone, helpers… and lest we forget, their demand for a raise. How about returning in value the years of having sumptuous food at the parliamentary canteen at a subsidised cost? I’m sure one of them will get up and say, ‘Listen, it was that subsidy that probably gave my brothers the idea that Rs 32 per day is enough to keep the urban poor above the poverty line.’ Ah yes! I now remember that our rural poor dip lower to Rs 26 per day… I guess a family of four can have rice and dal at the parliamentary canteen for this amount, right? Dreams of our parliamentarians are as crude as this. But we really need to see the good things in their deliberations.
Our legislatures work hard on the issue of subsidies. I’m sure their excel sheets with the data of friendly corporates who donate generously to their party is what determines which of them get how much subsidy benefits… and you thought it is some core sector that qualifies for it? How daft can you be, my dear common man to even dare to have such absurd thoughts.
We have some really brainy people walking the haloed corridors of our parliament and assemblies as they are the ones who understood what Sigmund Freud wrote in ‘Civilization and Its Discontents’: ‘Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.’ So they simply transposed such gems on to even our education policy and decided that most people do not actually want real education because education involves responsibility and they’re all afraid of it. Well yes, we have millions of people who have been forced to accept an ‘education subsidy’ that is, exit one class and enter a higher one without knowing what was really happening. All they have is a rather vague sense of education that report cards and certificates give. Yes sir, we’re all victims of ill-planned subsidies.
Did you know that Noam Chomsky wrote that ‘everyone’s worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there’s really an easy way: Stop participating in it.’ Do you think that this game of ill-placed subsidies has been going on for a long time now and that the common man must decide to stop participating in it? Do you think we need to begin by universally rejecting the LPG subsidy… unless the politician too has the initiative and the courage to give it all up and prove that selfless service isn’t just lip service that has gone on for decades now? Do you think that instead of just posing question, we now need to get up and tell the politician, ‘Give it up dammit or…’
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Article first published in Business Insider, dated 07 July 2015:
2015_06_07_BusinessInsider_Everyone’s worried about subsidy
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Arvind Passey
09 July 2015
