Companies do it; ngos do it; societies and charities do it; partnership and proprietory firms do it. But in their budgets presented to the people annually, neither the Central nor state governments disclose the amounts they spend from — taxpayers’ funds — on paying themselves by way of salaries and a laundry list of perquisites. But fortu-itously Parliament passed the Right to Information Act, 2005.
By utilising the generous provisions of this empowering legislation, after a flurry of letters exchanged with and within the Union ministry of finance, your correspondent succeeded in extracting the information that the annual salaries and perquisites, and domestic and foreign travel expenditure (provisional and unaudited) of the Central government in 2011-12 was Rs.95,291.27 crore and Rs.3,459.27 crore respectively, aggregating Rs.98,750.54 crore. Given that the total number of Central government employees is estimated at 2.31 million (excluding Indian Railways and the defence services personnel), the per capita income of Central government employees is a handsome Rs.4.24 lakh per year. Applying the yardstick of the Planning Commission and its well-travelled deputy chairman Dr. Montek Singh Ahluwalia (who ventures abroad every nine days) who have drawn the poverty line for urban citizens at Rs.33 per capita per day, every government employee is among India’s super-rich even if one excludes the vast additional amounts extorted by them from the hapless public.
To the above salaries and travel expenditure one should also add establishment costs, overheads and maintenance expenses which together are certain to aggregate another Rs.50,000 crore per year. This calculus indicates that the country’s annual expenditure on the 2.31 million slothful and uncooperative neta-babu establishment is more than twice its outlay (Rs.65,867 crore in 2012-13) for the education of the country’s 480 million children. Little wonder the conspicuous — but alas, unchallenged — omission of the wages and salary details in Central and state government budgets.
Colonised minds
Although belatedly, the empire is striking back. Long accustomed to mutely accepting the value-premises of the braindead badshahs of Bollywood, innocent of all notions of ethnic pride, a Stay Unfair Stay Beautiful national campaign — protesting the flood of skin lightening creams and lotions pouring into the Indian marketplace — is gathering momentum. Promoted by the Chennai-based NGO Women of Worth (WoW) and its founder Kavitha Emmanuel in 2009, WoW has launched a signature campaign on its website (change.org/dark is beautiful) calling upon the Kolkata-based cosmetics company Emami Ltd to discontinue its Fair and Handsome national television campaign starring Bollywood superstar Shahrukh Khan.
In a petition which has gathered over 14,000 signatures and is addressed to the manufacturers of Emami and the producers of the ad campaign, the signatories call upon them to suspend the offensive advertisement in the media. In the television commercial, Khan who himself resembles a scary Central Asian waxwork, chucks a tube of this miracle cream to a youth. “In the next scene, the boy’s skin grows whiter, his smile brightens and his hopes rise. The message: fair skin is a prerequisite for success”, complain the petitioners who argue that with 90 percent of the country’s population being dark complexioned, the company, ad men and the superstar are preying upon the insecurities of the general populace to derive profit and benefit. According to the petitioners the campaign is “discriminatory”.
Such advertising which is prohibited by law in the US and most European countries should be banned in this country as well, because of the psychological damage and needless financial strain it imposes on gullible and uneducated rural folk, to most of whom Bollywood trash is gospel. Moreover there’s a mountain of evidence which indicates that skin lightening concoctions are a cancer hazard. It’s ironical that “western demons”, who as author Pankaj Mishra notes in Ruins of Empire (2012) with their florid complexions and deathly pallor often topped with red hair scared 18th century India half to death, have become the epitome of beauty in the sub-continent. Quite obviously the Brits did a thorough job of colonising the minds of Macaulay’s faux Englishmen.
Unkindest cuts
Strange are the twists and turns of history. Enterprises of great pith and moment can rebound on us piquantly. Way back in 1983 when your correspondent was editor of Businessworld (estb. 1981), the fortnightly published the first India’s most respected companies survey.
Ironically three decades later, Tata Consultancy Services Ltd, whose name is anathema to EducationWorld, has been adjudged India’s Most Respected Company in the latest issue of the snappy, new-look Businessworld (September 9). On almost all seven parameters chosen by BW to assess business excellence, TCS bested the second ranked Reliance Industries, Infosys, Larsen & Toubro and Hindustan Lever, ranked the country’s Top 5 most respected companies. The results of the BW survey are bad news for your editor who not to mince words, hates TCS and its brusque chief executive N. Chandrasekharan in particular.
However this animosity is a recent development. From 2005-2009 with the active collaboration of the legendary Fakir Chand Kohli, who against all odds built TCS into a globally competitive IT software and services heavyweight (annual revenue: Rs.48,426 crore) and his hand-picked CEO S. Ramadorai, EducationWorld ran a very successful India’s Best Teachers annual awards competition. The country’s most innovative primary and secondary school teachers were awarded cash and other prizes by TCS. Kohli in particular, was easily persuaded that as one of the country’s largest employers of educated and skilled youth, TCS should encourage, reward and celebrate the country’s best — and largely unsung — school teachers. However shortly after Ramadorai retired in 2009 and Chandrasekharan succeeded him, the latter immediately terminated the TCS-EducationWorld Teachers Awards, presumably because earlier his opposition to the awards was overruled by Kohli/Ramdorai.
Now the unkindest cut is this tunnel vision techie (Chandrasekharan) reaping the reputational dividend of a company built brick by brick by Kohli, and being celebrated by Businessworld built brick by brick by your editor.