Flying False Economy

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About the only time members of our cabinet and the Congress party queue up, it seems is in line to proclaim their "austerity". Reminiscent of the Ella Fitzgerald number,

Birds do it, Bees do it, even some educated fleas do it,

In Spain the upper sets do it, the Lithuanians and the Letts do it

Let's do it, they're all singing, Let's fall in line with the austerity drive!

Like kids at camp roughing it out, they're pointing to their khadi kurtas and their government cars, showing off their economy class boarding cards and telling us how much they are slumming it.

"I'll go by economy class," say Anand Sharma, Azad and Praful Patel

"I'll go by train," chime Jitin Prasad and Jairam Ramesh

"And I will go by cargo," says Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari.

And no more five star hotels for anyone. So there. I'd laugh, except I think the joke is really on us.

Lets begin at the beginning, or as Sinatra would say, the beguinning.

An article in the Indian Express that expressed Indian horror at the fact that SM Krishna and Shashi Tharoor were staying at 5-star hotels while they waited for their government bungalows to be renovated. Now most of us know how tough it is to get the government to take action against anyone on the basis of a news report. Only two weeks prior to that article, the Express ran a headline story (http://www.indianexpress.com/news/for-kalmadi-f1-is-family-1st/505516/) on how IOA chief Suresh Kalmadi was sanctioning a project for Formula 1's grandprix entry to India. The paper found that the company F1 partnered with was JPSK Sports, and yes the 'SK' in JPSK stood for Sumeer (son of) Suresh Kalmadi. Any action? Not that we heard of.

In the same month Steel Minister Virbhadra Singh and his wife were booked for corruption by Himachal police (http://ibnlive.in.com/news/virbhadra-singh-wife-booked-for-corruption/98546-3.html) after their voices were matched to a phone conversation discussing bribes for favours. Any action? Nada.

And then CNN-IBN ran two stories, two separate intra-ministry enquiries on irregularities; the Haj scam under former MOS for External Affairs E.Ahmed (now MOS railways) (http://ibnlive.in.com/news/minister-accused-in-haj-quota-allocation-racket/100030-3.html ) and one against the office of former Steel Minister Ram Vilas Paswan (http://ibnlive.in.com/news/gold-scam-alleged-stateowned-firm-under-probe/100069-3.html) . Action? Huh? After the enquiries, some guidlelines were changed. But action against ministers? Zero. Zippo.

But no sooner than the newsprint on this article had dried- our government was roused to instant action. The Finance ministry, nay, the Finance Minister himself addressed a press conference- the offending Extravagant, sorry External Affairs Minister, and Jr. offending extravagant External affairs minister had been ordered to vacate their hotel rooms. Yay, we all cheered.

Hounded out, Sr. EAM was sober. Jr., not so experienced in the art of artful dodging, actually said he had only needed a gym and some privacy. Whaat ? Like Madame Defarge's army, we had tasted blood. Off with his head, off with this aristocrat's head, went out the cry.

The next blow came from closer home to him- at another press conference, Rahul Gandhi intoned that "politicians must practise austerity all the time"- and then gave himself as an example. The simple scion of our biggest party, though, forgets to mention, that he already has a ministerial bungalow (despite being only a 2-term MP), and besides a fully kitted gym at home, is a regular member of atleast two of the capital's poshest gyms, one of them at a 5-star. Clearly one man's opulent living is another man's necessary fitness regime.

So now the government has a set of guidelines in place: No 5-stars, no business class, no unnecessary foreign travel. And they're all getting in line to proclaim their kameez is more sadhaaran safed than Lalitaji. Why don't any of them call the bluff? Why don't any of them question the cost-benefit analysis of flying a busy minister by economy rather than by business? Why is it ok for half our cabinet to book the St. James Court Hotel in London during the summer cricket-tennis season (which incidentally coincides with drought-famine season here), but not for a Minister to work out of a Hotel here? Why is it Ok for one minister to say he always wears Khadi as proof of his simplicity, while his son's friends are flown out once a year for the said son's birthday party to their family Fort in a private plane? Forget birthdays, why does no one call out every politician in the book for turning their children's marriages into gigantic lavish jamborees? And why is it ok for every other minister to claim he only takes a 1re. salary, when clearly that means he needs other sources of income to sustain himself.

Because all of them are part of the same hypocritical charade. Austerity is just a passing fad that they've adopted this week (after all, Fashion week is still a few months away).

There are people like Mamata Bannerjee, who actually live out of a simple room, others like the Prime Minister himself, who had his daughter married at home with a tiny guest-list, and there are, hundreds of politicians, MPs, MLAs who are equally simple, most of them because they genuinely can't afford anything else. But they're not the ones doing the most shouting today.