LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Sir,
PM Modi's request for generosity
In an effort to appear pro-poor, PM Modi appears regualrly on prime-time TV in a government advertisement, advising LPG consumers to forego their subsidy on LPG so that poor people can get LPG. (Please watch the ad very carefully ... PM Modi says that the poor woman who cooks on a firewood chullah will get LPG, thus saving her health). The point here is that if we, in the higher income groups agree with PM Modi's appeal, what we forego is not LPG, but the cash subsidy.
PM Modi urges us to forego cash subsidy because we do not really need the subsidy. Effectively he is asking us to provide cash to government so that more cash benefits can reach the poor. But at the same time, parliamentarians are increasing their own salaries and perks. Does not PM Modi see the irony in his public appeal, that while he uses his tremendous oratorical skills to request and urge the well-off citizens to be generous, parliamentarians (and also state legislators) cannot set an example in generosity but are living it up? In the meantime, OROP for the soldier who retires at a young age remains “unaffordable”!
Sudhir Vombatkere
(Maj Gen S.G.Vombatkere (Retd))