There is one thing in common with all politicians – influence the people with talk. And talk fills the market place. This cannot be changed and there is nothing we can do about this, indeed it is superfluous to even raise a finger against this truth. Now that talk, especially loud talk filled with promises, has become the source of everything we believe in, even to the extent that reason and knowledge are no longer heeded to, we have come to realise that we have to adapt to the new situations that come with it, just as we have had to adapt to the frequent power cuts that limit the times when we can sit and work.
Politics is about satisfying the greatest number over the few, the people have elected who they want and so if our politicians appoint whom they want and it has opened a few wounds in those who seek for the good of the people and the State, it is of no consequence to the politicians, still we must speak.
Recently a post on social media on payments made to Political Appointees drew the attention of many and so I intend to tackle the subject of that post with a solemn and official stamp of disapproval as there is prima facie evidence of deception in the way the government is informing the public of the honorarium paid to the political appointees in the State. The figures of honorarium paid starts with a basic amount (Rs 20,000) which is largely the fodder that is fed to the people to indicate to them the austerity with which the government is conducting itself in payments to political appointees, a kind of “baksheesh” since the State cannot afford to be bled of its financial resources.
There’s a very curious truth in the way we see the payments made to louts more particularly than payments made to the deserving, because a smart politician, and our Chief Minister is smart no doubt, has a way of concealing payments made to louts and putting it in the past with great haste by creating even greater new events somewhere else which catch the attention of the people thereby getting them to forget what they were digging up as another scandal of greater magnitude (actually lesser) has arisen somewhere else. In the course of a few hours what was troubling us has now become a thing of the past and we lose all interest in describing the event as it has become obsolete and the people’s mood on it has shifted.
So let us not shift and instead dwell on this manner in which payments are made to Political Appointees as the attention of the people on this matter is still fresh…after all the monthly packet is always a thing of the present. It is a wonder that some people are capable of dwelling on one topic without being distracted by something equally disturbing elsewhere. One has to be honest about oneself either with a sense of shame or vanity. These are the ones who step aside from the gains politics can offer, they keep gains out because their seriousness lies elsewhere – they have a different concept of happiness – a packet that cannot be grasped with just four fingers and a thumb.
And so, coming back to the payments to political appointees I was shocked to see the long tail of perks made against a somewhat low “Honorarium,” so much so that the main parcel of payment (basic) is not even 10 percent of the total package drawn. The break-up of payments made is worthwhile to study if one is to understand that which the Finance Department wants to conceal. It is available on social media so I will not waste valuable space by reproducing it here. Consider these figures among the payments made which we usually refer to as perks.
Apart from honorarium there are at least 15 attached perks. I am fully aware that I do not belong among the specific Audit and Accounts Service members on whose finger tips nature has set an objection to any and everything that comes their way, but neither am I a naïve child…common sense tells me that if house rent is as much as Honorarium that is nonsense and a greater nonsense when two and four Grade IV employees, are provided to attend at the office and home respectively of a Political Appointee. Here is the deception we are treated to. When the Chief Minister is called upon to state the honorarium paid to the political appointees all he mentions is Rs 20,000, when the truth is that total emoluments is close to or more than Rs 2 lakh per month and that is equivalent, more or less, to the salary of an IAS officer, not less.
Recently the Chief Secretary of Meghalaya brought out a notice that no person above the age of 70 is to be appointed at any capacity in the government. It was long overdue – shabash. This is the perfect example of a crab in progress…move sideward which is one up against the historian who looks backwards. The criteria, if there are any, and if there aren’t they should be comprehensively spelt out together with the one mentioned above, for any job in government as a Political Appointee, should have more to do with ability than age.
The Political Appointee perpetrates knowledge in the same way as he perpetrates sin; nervously at the start as only a guilty greenhorn is capable, looking around to see if someone notices – so that someone may notice? And in contentment of being noticed, amnesty is found. Has any Political Appointee who holds a key post ever looked like he was ignorant? – I am assuming he was well educated.
Social media is overloaded with the silly behaviour of some of our politicians, it only follows that the same silly behaviour is pouring ever more into the choice of the Political Appointees. Without a set of criteria and the job description for Political Appointees we will continue to be depressed by crude souls. Because as of now, when a Political Appointee sits in any Government Committee those that are not silly only sit and wag their heads from left to right in shame at having to listen to what is going on. Politicians are considered deep by the common man – why? Because no one knows the depth of a politician’s mind – sometimes they are not even shallow.
In politics, and especially as the Chief Minister, one is never expected to commit a rash act especially in the choice of portfolios among the elected members or, as in this article, in the appointment of Political Appointees, either they commit them or they don’t, but when from the very start – from the very first act too much of a rash act was committed it follows that from there on more and more rash acts will follow and so a second is committed and from then on there is nothing one can do about it any longer. What does it matter if the people are right in what they say against the Political Appointees…they are too much in the right all the time, there can be no doubt about that and it ends there.
In the last ten years as in the present, concerned citizens have passed an identical judgement on the way the State is being governed: it is worthless. Everywhere we go, whomsoever we may listen to in the streets in the tea shops on social media and mainstream media it is the same story that the people are uttering – a story full of doubt, full of melancholy, full of weariness with life, full of opposition to what is going on in the State. What does that prove? What does it point to? That virtue is a sin. Formerly one would have said these are pessimists, but not now because it is so open to see they nod their heads in approval knowing that there is something true in what they are saying.
We are taught that only the wise know how to participate in a democracy and therefore there must be some truth that the wisdom of the people has given us the best available. Can we still believe this after what is going on around us? “Here at any rate there must be something sick” that is all we can say for the moment. Take a closer look at the people leading us, and their appointees, and all we can do is laugh…really? Is the wisdom of our people, if the elections are what we judge them by, inspired by the smell of carrion?
We were once a society that never gave in to too much talk and we looked upon a person that talked too much as a person with bad manners, but now we have compromised ourselves to these chatterboxes. We have become a people who judge others on how much they can talk, anyone who does not have the skill of talking we do not take seriously anymore.
Chatterboxes are now taken seriously as if to say that we develop contentment from hearing their solutions to the problems we are faced with, as if there is no other expedient to the problems. We have sacrificed character and reputation for speech, and empty promises for goodness. With talk and promises of the future simple people are easily swayed in the choices they make and this allows the mediocre to rise above the fit and the adequate, and that does not mean there are no more good people around.
