Not with our money, you don’t

Gandhiji traveled third class by train. It is not that he could not afford the first class fare. Nehru bought only one sleeper berth not because India could not pay for three. By doing so they were trying to send a message to their people on the need for thrift — especially with public money. Now we have the spectacle of our law makers giving themselves frequent hikes in allowances even when thousands were dying of hunger.

It is not only when our politicians are in office that they provide for themselves on a lavish scale; they make ample provision for themselves even after demiting office. At present we have five former prime ministers, all living in Delhi, and all of them with socialistic pretensions. They have been allotted the largest bungalows in Lutyen’s Delhi and, as per media reports, the security of each one of them is looked after by 250 security personnel on a three shift basis. Do they really need such security, especially when not even a peanut was hurled at them when they were in office?

The saddest spectacle is the manner in which leaders of the backward castes and Dalits are aping the profligate styles of those against whom they waged life-long battles. There was a reasonable expectation that leaders like Laloo Prasad Yadav and Mayawati would become role models for a very different kind of public leaders. But so corrupting is the influence of our political culture that these leaders, once they come to power, try to upstage their upper class peers through a display of unrivalled ostentation.