India is a country of odds! We are geographically diverse, with the majestic Himalayas on one end, all the way to the pyramidal south on the other. We have more than a thousand languages and dialects, and are home to some of the most prominent religions in the world. In a country where the colour of the soil apparently changes every 100km, we do have one unifying truth. We are all revelers in the joy of being an Indian! Heads instantly go up high, chests puff out with pride. 'I am an Indian'. These four simple words seem to bring out the collective pride of being born in one of the hotbeds of human civilization. Thankfully, a lot of us also make more than Rs.1000 per month. Imagine the horror of cashing only Rs.990 as your monthly salary, if you are living in a metropolis like New Delhi or Mumbai. Those extra ten bucks can change your life. They can uplift you, from being defined as a poor person by the government of India, to the next strata of the Indian society. And we all agree, nobody likes to be poor.
It therefore came as a gargantuan relief to the crores across the country, when the Tendulkar committee wrote in its report that India is getting richer, and anybody making equal to or more than the princely sum of Rs.1000 per month in an urban area is no longer poor. Crores of beggars and daily wage-earners became rich overnight. Never has such a miracle been conjured anywhere across the world! More joy to being an Indian, a not-poor one at that.
As is the norm in a happy society, there are naysayers and skeptics, who claim that Rs.32 is too small of an amount to live satisfactorily in an Indian city, and that the UPA government is trying to save face by fudging with numbers and statistics. To those naysayers I say, that first of all, the current government is not smart enough to fudge with numbers, let alone statistics. Hell, half of their MPs may not even be able to spell statistics! Secondly, an honourable government official, who lives in a humble abode, and has no access to the glamour of foreign trips and vacations, has said that Rs.32 is 'not all that ridiculous'. This gentleman never complained of inadequate bathroom facilities in his office in New Delhi. He simply thought that spending more than Rs.35 lakhs on fixing some toilets in his department, could help relieve the stress his team goes through in keeping India rich.
Now, we have more proof that you can have two full meals easily within the limits of Rs.32 per day. First Raj Babbar, and then another gentleman, Rasheed Masood, has laid waste to the argument that you cannot have two square meals in this amount of money. Babbar said that you can have a sumptuous meal for only Rs.12, which also comes with the delicacy of Sambhar and vegetables. You can spend the remaining amount on his or his son's films if you wish. If only I knew the location of this reasonably-priced eatery in Mumbai, me and my friends could have saved a fortune on mess expenses during our IIT days. That amount of money could've propelled us to the upper middle-class (maybe, just maybe!). What a waste of money all those years!
So there lies the proof to the argument that half of the beggars and jobless roadside dwellers in our country are not poor. They are simply lazy. Maybe they should learn from our efficient MPs and ministers, who work so hard to earn their money. They have kept the government running like a well-oiled machine. Such is our faith in their capability, that a lot of parents tell their kids to grow up and join politics. 99.99% of those parents are themselves politicians.
PS: I love my country, and I hope that we will all take a step towards cleaning up the mess of the last 5 years in next year's general election.
It therefore came as a gargantuan relief to the crores across the country, when the Tendulkar committee wrote in its report that India is getting richer, and anybody making equal to or more than the princely sum of Rs.1000 per month in an urban area is no longer poor. Crores of beggars and daily wage-earners became rich overnight. Never has such a miracle been conjured anywhere across the world! More joy to being an Indian, a not-poor one at that.
As is the norm in a happy society, there are naysayers and skeptics, who claim that Rs.32 is too small of an amount to live satisfactorily in an Indian city, and that the UPA government is trying to save face by fudging with numbers and statistics. To those naysayers I say, that first of all, the current government is not smart enough to fudge with numbers, let alone statistics. Hell, half of their MPs may not even be able to spell statistics! Secondly, an honourable government official, who lives in a humble abode, and has no access to the glamour of foreign trips and vacations, has said that Rs.32 is 'not all that ridiculous'. This gentleman never complained of inadequate bathroom facilities in his office in New Delhi. He simply thought that spending more than Rs.35 lakhs on fixing some toilets in his department, could help relieve the stress his team goes through in keeping India rich.
Now, we have more proof that you can have two full meals easily within the limits of Rs.32 per day. First Raj Babbar, and then another gentleman, Rasheed Masood, has laid waste to the argument that you cannot have two square meals in this amount of money. Babbar said that you can have a sumptuous meal for only Rs.12, which also comes with the delicacy of Sambhar and vegetables. You can spend the remaining amount on his or his son's films if you wish. If only I knew the location of this reasonably-priced eatery in Mumbai, me and my friends could have saved a fortune on mess expenses during our IIT days. That amount of money could've propelled us to the upper middle-class (maybe, just maybe!). What a waste of money all those years!
So there lies the proof to the argument that half of the beggars and jobless roadside dwellers in our country are not poor. They are simply lazy. Maybe they should learn from our efficient MPs and ministers, who work so hard to earn their money. They have kept the government running like a well-oiled machine. Such is our faith in their capability, that a lot of parents tell their kids to grow up and join politics. 99.99% of those parents are themselves politicians.
PS: I love my country, and I hope that we will all take a step towards cleaning up the mess of the last 5 years in next year's general election.
