How Much are you worth in India?
Recently during the Prime Ministers ground-breaking press conference,he had inadvertently remarked that we are a nation of 1 billion dollars, before he realised his "tongue of the slip" and corrected dollars to people. Every once In a way some magazines and newspapers proudly proclaim the top ten billionaires of India or how many Indians in the Billionaire list because these are definitely bits of information that will bring cheer to the millions of Indians who live off the salaries paid by this billionaire club.
A lot of news is on TV these days over the new compensation being announced for the victims of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy.More than two decades after the horrifying incident, the emotional thread and anger may be missing amongst the rest of Indians to actually prick the government's conscience to set the records straight.It is a shame for us Indians that we are allowing the value of life to be devalued so easily.Death of other Indians in terrorist acts, railway accidents, air accidents, maoist attacks, road accidents while travelling in Govt buses, school buses plunging off bridges, whatever the gory unnatural end might be we as a class of people called Indians are impervious to the fact that we are also contributors to the indifferent attitude of our shameful political class.
Read these examples-
1) Death of people in stampede at Railway Station due to last minute change of platform - Rs 2 lakhs compensation
2) Death of people in Gyaneshwari express Train accident - Rs 2 lakh from PM, Rs 5 lakhs and a railway job from Mamata Banerjee
3) Death of people in Air-India Mangalore crash - 10 lakhs interim relief from Air India( ultimately upto 72 lakhs since there is a carriage by air act), 2 lakhs from the PM, 2 lakhs from Karnatka CM.
4) 30 charred to death as KSRTC Ordinary class Bus overturns - Rs 1 lakh
5) 5 dead in KSRTC Volvo Bus -2.5 lakhs compensation
These are just a few examples, I am sure you would also have noticed the varying price-tags we put on our own dead while the one agency, The Government' on the which the blame entirely rests gets away without paying any price. These things are somehow no longer shocking to us unaffected people and we remain indifferent.
If you notice the examples cited the compensation for the railway station stampede in Delhi and the KSRTC ordinary bus in Karnataka are amonst the least. This is because the bus carried mostly labourers and the train for which the crowd was overflowing was anyway an unreserved one, which meant again a labour class. But the other deaths seem to me as being more prestigious ones since the dead are valued higher there.
So for a nation of a billion dollars @ 1 dollar per person we are as Oscar Wilde would have said a nation of cynics who know the price of everything but the value of nothing.Remember, if you want to die profitably do your family a favour and use only services which are the exception, not the norm that a nation deserves.
A lot of news is on TV these days over the new compensation being announced for the victims of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy.More than two decades after the horrifying incident, the emotional thread and anger may be missing amongst the rest of Indians to actually prick the government's conscience to set the records straight.It is a shame for us Indians that we are allowing the value of life to be devalued so easily.Death of other Indians in terrorist acts, railway accidents, air accidents, maoist attacks, road accidents while travelling in Govt buses, school buses plunging off bridges, whatever the gory unnatural end might be we as a class of people called Indians are impervious to the fact that we are also contributors to the indifferent attitude of our shameful political class.
Read these examples-
1) Death of people in stampede at Railway Station due to last minute change of platform - Rs 2 lakhs compensation
2) Death of people in Gyaneshwari express Train accident - Rs 2 lakh from PM, Rs 5 lakhs and a railway job from Mamata Banerjee
3) Death of people in Air-India Mangalore crash - 10 lakhs interim relief from Air India( ultimately upto 72 lakhs since there is a carriage by air act), 2 lakhs from the PM, 2 lakhs from Karnatka CM.
4) 30 charred to death as KSRTC Ordinary class Bus overturns - Rs 1 lakh
5) 5 dead in KSRTC Volvo Bus -2.5 lakhs compensation
These are just a few examples, I am sure you would also have noticed the varying price-tags we put on our own dead while the one agency, The Government' on the which the blame entirely rests gets away without paying any price. These things are somehow no longer shocking to us unaffected people and we remain indifferent.
If you notice the examples cited the compensation for the railway station stampede in Delhi and the KSRTC ordinary bus in Karnataka are amonst the least. This is because the bus carried mostly labourers and the train for which the crowd was overflowing was anyway an unreserved one, which meant again a labour class. But the other deaths seem to me as being more prestigious ones since the dead are valued higher there.
So for a nation of a billion dollars @ 1 dollar per person we are as Oscar Wilde would have said a nation of cynics who know the price of everything but the value of nothing.Remember, if you want to die profitably do your family a favour and use only services which are the exception, not the norm that a nation deserves.
Get a life man. Nobody even thinks of these things in our country, do you think the government is not smart.The amount of compensation is also based on political factors,the constitution has nothing to say about it.So the people responsible for providing services to the citizens always get away.Use your own transport
ReplyDeleteDude you need to engage that grey matter of yours... atleast feel happy that these guys are offering something. If you get into the basics who knows whether they get it or not.
ReplyDelete