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.

Sunday 30 September 2012

AUSTERE MANMOHAN SPLURGES – COMFORTABLY, SELECTIVELY NUMB

AUSTERITY HO! HEIL AUSTERECTOMY 

Arunachal Pradesh to enforce austerity drive
Govt austerity, AI woes force Balmer Lawrie to start travel portal
Austerity steps to pinch PGI doctors – Chandigarh
DUSU poll contenders in no mood for austerity
Govt may tighten purse strings further – (subsidy and fiscal deficit)

'Austere' UPA's 3rd anniversary bash cost Rs 7,700 per head
Twelve-fold blow to UPA government's austerity plan as globetrotting ministers blow Rs 678 crore of taxpayers' money
UPA's Rs 100 crore ad blitzkrieg amid talks of austerity

Two different set of headlines above, filtered out of the Google search engine after hitting it with the ‘UPA Austerity’ and India Austerity’ combination tags.

7 Race Course Road, May 22, 375 guests – Manmohan invites over 600 to celebrate three years in office during his stint as the prime minister of India. Everything is going wrong for him. Scams, corruption charges, rising prices, weakening Rupee, clubbed with a bad Monsoon has made his condition precarious.

Everyone is pointing fingers at him for ‘governance mismanagement’ and ‘bad governance of Economy’. He is trying hard but is not able to go beyond his dull, routine, toothless explanation. He then tries to evade direct answers as far as possible. (Sometimes in the near future he would claim his ‘right to silence’ - remember his famous (notorious) ‘my silence’ anecdote in the Parliament.) He tries to create a comfort zone in his by getting 'selectively silent'. 
  
Completing 8 years in office - he probably sees some solace in at-least this symbolic positive at this difficult time. So he decides to go unrestrained once more, the way he and his colleagues have been doing, defying the austerity measures ‘defined’ by them only. Now see this.

Rs. 11.34 Lakh: Catering charges for the party
Rs. 14.42 Lakh: Tent
Rs. 2.92 Lakh: Electricity
Rs 24,444: Flowers
Total expenses on the party thrown by the PMO: Rs 28,95,503

(All figures courtesy the Times of India - 'Austere' UPA's 3rd anniversary bash cost Rs 7,700 per head / September 28, 2012 – which in turn is based on an RTI reply by one Ramesh Verma from Hisar)

The Ministry of External Affairs took care of the catering and tent charges while the PWD was pitched in for the electricity and flower arrangements.

Now tell me do you remember the last time when did you have a Rs. 7,700 dinner?

This is the same government that expects us to survive on Rs. 30 or so a day (Rs. 32 in urban areas; Rs. 26 in rural areas – a gem of Montekonomics).

It tears into the doublespeak of our selectively numb economist prime minister; it rams into the double standard of our political class.

Preaching for us to follow austerity, advising us to be ready for tough economic measures and reduced government spending and subsidies, they spend the fund lavishly that is supposed to be used for Manmonan’s ‘aam aadmi’.

What Manmohan said on the same day he splurged bares what the current political class is made of (and read it with the rider that Manmohan was seen as the person of integrity). He said (I quote from a PTI report dated May 22, 2012), “Difficult decisions have to be taken on both spending and revenue mobilisation. I recognize that we face pressure on our balance of payments and that the fiscal situation needs careful management.”

Now isn’t it a known fact that the subject of such difficult decisions is the Manmohan’s ‘aam aadmi’ only and not Manmohan and his political class? Yes, probably Manmohan and his political class use every such occasion to reiterate the class divide that the political class is creating in India.

It is not that this over Rs. 28 Lakh extravaganza is going to take India out of its fiscal mess but it tells us one thing very clearly. It shows us the true intent of our political class that we so often witness by their shameless justifications whenever a report of their excess comes into the public domain.

They propose. We cry hoarse. They enjoy. They continue with their splurging. They continue to be parasitic on public’s fund.

The list is long. The list is getting longer. The headlines in the second lot mentioned in the beginning of this write-up tell about the most recent additions. 

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