C’mon man!

So the government and the media have done it again! Once again the skeletons tumbled out of the closet but somewhere in the store that rat had nibbled out the cork leaving the red wine flow unappreciated and hence the whole household, with that nonexistent cat, is running after it.

Congratulations to the giants of the game for taking away all the focus from a nation-wide cross generational endemic, affectionately called corruption, by talking intellectual nonsense about petro prices and FDI in retail. Thank you my enlightened brethren who have made the white world their home, my dear formidable NRI role models, all graduates from posh B-schools whose fees my hardworking and honest father could not afford, for talking absolute ‘sense’ about the degraded Indian economy which indeed is like the famished African refusing to sell oil for food. Thanks for reiterating ‘enough is enough, let’s not talk of corruption and the coal scam because the Indian economy is in dire straits’ so as to debate the new-generation Big Bang that would conjure a new world where some of my privileged, and intellectually blessed, friends would rule.

Now somewhere in all this formidable discussion figuring jargons and graphs and numbers and dollar bills and debt crisis and crude prices and what not, I – the average ‘common man’ who earns say just over 20,000 per month and follows all these matters of grave interest with great enthusiasm with the honest intention to understand, if not participate, the process of running an economy- am getting lost.

Can anyone tell me how would the Indian economy post this Big Bang benefit me? You see I am a ‘common man’ – a term that the Indian political ‘class’ and the media at its service have coined.

If at all words can depict social psychology through binary, then this term – ‘common man’ or ‘aam aadmi’- says a lot about how our politicians think. We are ‘common’, we are the ordinary. Hence, we should have to bear the burden of unemployment, of the ravaged economy, of inflation, of a quarterly rise in petro prices, of crammed rail coaches, of bribery to get a passport processed, of power cuts, of traffic jams while a convoy is passing. Vis-à-vis are the people who don’t come under this definition ‘common man’. I mean the politicians, the business houses that run governments and the well-paid national media.

Let me elaborate. All our netas would say this would harm the common man, that was a betrayal of the common man’s trust, these are what the common man does not want… Have they ever made a statement where they are a part of this common man’s class? They are special. Aren’t they? So MPs get free diesel, ride imported cars, own mines and businesses yet get subsidized delicacies at the parliament canteen, have free homes in the national capital where there is uninterrupted power supply, travel free with no queues for tickets and many more. Please don’t forfeit these. After all we have voted you to and for privilege/s. Take them, but don’t talk such rubbish about the economy because you very well know that the money lost in these innumerable and shameless scams and those dollars deposited overseas could have done turned all your promises and planning to reality.

But why aren’t there any efforts netaji?

Ah c’mon man! Try to understand.