Costly courtesies

My five-year-old daughter’s classmate came calling on her a few days back. The duo had planned to do their homework together. But the friend had forgot to bring her pencil. Though a few were lying around on the floor, the girl said to my daughter, ’please, can I borrow your pencil’ to which my daughter readily obliged. The friend could have very well picked up a pencil and no one would have objected. But she didn’t. Instead, she made a request. So what, one might say, it is just a routine scene in any classroom. Well, such courtesies and manners all but end there.

‘Please’ and ‘Thanks’ are the buzzwords of the civilized world. They are not merely words but reflect a courtesy, a sense of obligation and a sense of embarrassment at putting somebody to trouble, howsoever minuscule it may be. You say ‘please’, when you want something and ‘thanks’ when you get it. Schools and responsible parents teach the children only that.

But then our politicians hail from a totally different, shall we say, school of thought. They neither ask your permission when they appropriate what is truly yours nor do they acknowledge. The toddler’s courtesy and the sense of embarrassment at having to use someone else’s property, though with permission is in sharp contrast to the politicians who think that all their eyes see as their own.

The cost of maintaining the political class and after their death, their samadhis is mindboggling. Who is footing the bill? We the citizens. And what do we get in return? First, promises and hope and then despair and disappointment. Ironically, they call themselves servants of the people and we are supposedly their masters. In reality, they neither serve nor do we, the masters, get anywhere near gaining their attention, leave alone service.

A weekly magazine has come out with a very interesting story about the state of affairs in Bihar. No doubt a lawless land, what is happening there simply takes the cake for what one might describe as utter shamelessness and disregard of decency. Starting with the Governor of the state, followed by the Chief Minister and Cabinet Ministers and even officials, all of them breed cattle, grow vegetable farms and even fish farms in their government bungalows which have liberal amount of acreage spread around it. And they do it as a commercial venture. The magazine even says that the fish sold at the Raj Bhavan is the most sought after while the Chief Minister’s family makes an easy Rs.1.5 lakh every month by selling milk produced by the Scandinavian cattle, brought specially from Denmark and maintained in airconditioned cattle sheds. No wonder there was such a demand for fodder. The maintenance cost of the cattle and the farms is all, of course, promptly billed to the government. Even ex-Ministers refuse to vacate the government bungalows for fear of losing their carefully nurtured farms!

The land of Laloo is of course an extreme case. But politicians elsewhere in the country only vary in degree and not in intent and character. That they are all parasites, eating into the nation’s resources and morality at a pace that has already rendered it a fossil needs no elaboration. Their stomach and appetite for public property is the same, irrespective of the mask that they may project. Dhoti-clad parasites steal fodder, while their well-dressed peers make money on guns and petrol bunks.

We make them, then maintain them and even protect them. We give them our vote, followed by power and position. They then take off from there, helping themselves to power and pelf, taking a bite-off whatever they could lay their teeth on and licking the back of every hand that comes their way. They have no qualms, no shame as they poach on people’s money with impunity.

You lodge them in a government bungalow and then there is no way you can retrieve it even if they are stripped of their position. And when they do condescend to vacate government premises, several furnishings and furniture bought at government expense also disappear along with them. If you provide them with a  government vehicle, well you just have to fill it and forget it.

Even government helicopters and Raj Bhavans are at the disposal of the high and mighty, even if they hold no position. The prospect of power itself is enough to entitle them to official courtesy and associated respect. Family tours at the country’s expense in the pretext of election campaign, goes about unchecked, even as security concerns and protocol are thrown to winds just to please a prospective power centre.

Being a nation priding itself for hospitality, it is natural for us to have such ‘courtesies’ thrust upon us. But do not these beneficiaries experience a pang of guilt at having to put the already bleeding nation to so much discomfort? Obviously not. In fact, the horde is only enlarging by the day.

If only they have one hundredth of the conscience of the school girl, whenever they come to handle public money, the country would have been a much more richer one. And if only they think of giving back to the country, if not as an obligation, at least as a kickback, one hundredth of what they have attained, ours would have been a more prosperous and happy nation. If only…

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