The best way to know the self is feeling oneself at the moments of reckoning. The feeling of being alone, just with your senses, may lead you to think more consciously. More and more of such moments may sensitize ‘you towards you’, towards others. We become regular with introspection and retrospection. We get ‘the’ gradual connect to the higher self we may name Spirituality or God or just a Humane Conscious. We tend to get a rhythm again in life. We need to learn the art of being lonely in crowd while being part of the crowd. A multitude of loneliness in mosaic of relations! One needs to feel it severally, with conscience, before making it a way of life. One needs to live several such lonely moments. One needs to live severallyalone.

Friday, 29 June 2012

AUSTERITY HO! (V) - THE SPILL-OVER IS ALL SO PERVASIVE!


They: Our lords, inheriting the power corridors of Delhi and the Indian states
Us: The subjects, always taken for granted, and so treaded and trampled at will




Take 7:

They: Now we know how rotten has become the state of affairs at Air India and the Civil Aviation ministry. Air India has consistently been in bad news, be it financial bankruptcy, or employee strikes or management mismanagement or government botch-up. These folks really need the austerity measures what Angela Merkel is demanding for Eurozone crisis countries. But they have the Manmohan wisdom.

So midst the financial gloom, the strike-doom and austerity specter, they have decided to launch an elaborate campaign to promote the retiring Civil Aviation Secretary Nasim Zaidi for his bid to the Presidency of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). This tradition of gifting senior most bureaucrats with post-retirement engagement is probably unique to India.

The polling is scheduled for November 2013 and the 16-month long campaign is designed to tour 36 member countries of ICAO along with holding many small and large receptions in Montreal, the head-quarters of ICAO.

The expenditure is expected to run into millions (the taxpayers’ money) for a position that a Times of India report says is largely nominal.

Us: With Air India and Kingfisher Airlines crises becoming chronic financial illness, the common passenger is being duped like anything. Airfares remain astronomically high on domestic as well as international routes. Thousands of seats are gone. Experts say even the lean season of July to September is slated to see unusually higher airfares. May-June saw airlines charging 20-30 per cent higher and it excludes the unbelievable rush-hour charges. I ended up paying over Rs. 20,000 for a one-way Bangalore flight.

The fleecing airlines are beyond control. Apart from charging sky-high ticket prices, they have refused to pass-on the benefits of reduced air turbine fuel prices to the passenger. Where is DGCA?

And our lords have made the aviation sector of the country a bitter battle ground of personal egos and financial manipulations. The aviation minister has hardened his stands. Pilots are on indefinite hunger strike. Aviation sector is bleeding and passengers are oozing blood while parliamentarians are busy in passing laws that entitle them to get preferential king-size treatment in Air India flights.

Uninterrupted drama in the theatre of the absurd!

If we go with the Pioneer report that no austerity drive has been officially withdrawn yet, then who decides, if at all the austerity measures are followed, that it is the time to overrule?

The sham attitude has been the common among all the political parties of India but the Pioneer report presents one interesting observation about the present government.

When the UPA government came to power in 2004, it mocked the predecessor NDA government for wasteful expenditure especially on two counts. First was purchase decision of Embraer Executive class jets from Brazil for PM and other senior government dignitaries and the second was induction of bullet-proof BMWs in PM’s convoy. The UPA government rejected these initially and tried to score brownie points by giving verbose public statements. Manmohan Singh and Pranab Mukherjee led the charge.

Now if we go by the Pioneer report, we find that the government is comfortably using both the Embraer jets and BMW cars as decided by the NDA government.

Funny and ridiculous!

The austerity of ultra-rich buccaneer elites is overflowing and the public stands mesmerized enough to react on the ostentatious display. 

Heil Austerectomy! 

The spill-over is all so pervasive. 

©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey - http://severallyalone.blogspot.com/