The neo-oligarchs!

I was talking to my cabbie in New York who happened to be an emigrant from Hungary. I asked him how life was these days in his home country. I was taken aback when he stated rather casually that the ‘oligarchs’ were enjoying themselves while the public suffered privation. He also added that this was true of most countries of the old Soviet block and even of Russia today.

He then told me tales of the astronomical wealth and privileges that this class of aristocrats enjoyed that would put to shame the czars whom the ‘revolution’ overthrew.

The very next day I read this news item in the Indian media on my internet about the Lok Sabha speaker  Somnath Chatterjee refusing to attend a meeting  of the International Parliamentary Union at Geneva. That’s when my computer conked off. I was in ecstasies extolling Chatterjee for deciding not to waste time and tax payers’ money on yet another fruitless talkfest.

‘This guy is a rare guy. We need more politicians like him,’ I told my wife.

‘Why, what happened?” she asked.

‘Wait till you get my computer working,’ I replied.

A minute later my computer expert wife announced that my gadget was fit for operations.

‘Just visit the India Express website and see for yourself what the greatest Bengali after Saurabh Ganguly in the 21st century West Bengal has done.’

She read with avid interest but as she read, her eyes grew red and her looks intense till she burst out in wrath, ‘What the hell is this? Don’t rush to conclusions. Read it yourself.’

She all but threw the computer at me. It was then that I learnt that Chatterjee’s decision had nothing to do with any lofty sentiments but was because of his outrage at the thought that he would be frisked at London Airport! It was then I thought of what my New York cabbie told me Рthe ‘oligarchs’.

But then Chatterjee is a communist and we claim to be a socialist country. So we may not have oligarchs. But with Indian ingenuity we have come up with a new concept – the elected aristocrats!

Our leaders are given many privileges that would make our old Maharajas blush in embarrassment. The privy purses for Maharajas may have been abolished but there is now institutionalized largesse for our netas.

On my last visit to Chennai, I was shocked at the way policeman skewed me out of the Dr. Radhakrishnan Salai onto the dirty sidewalk as the cavalcade of more than a dozen cars escorted the state Chief Minister. Some bushy-moustached, gun-toting men in jeeps appeared to train their AK 47s on me. I felt I was being suspected of being a terrorist.

Even Robert Vadra enjoys rare privileges including exemption from being frisked at airports. Just as Ganshiji is called the father of the nation, maybe Vadra could be officially anointed as the son-in-law of the nation, rashtra damaab in Hindi.

Come to think of it, Somnath Chatterjee is right. How dare a London security man frisk a Lok Sabha Speaker at whose command many an MP shivers in his dhoti and on whose rebuke MPs from Bihar and UP stop rushing to the well of the House and refrain from wrenching microphones and hurling them at other members!

I recollect seeing photographs of Bill Gates being frisked at Congress where he frequently makes an appearance to give testimony on policy issues. But who is Bill Gate compared to our netas? Just a sidelight.

In the grand tradition of Maharajas giving titles of honour to their loyal subjects, an organization in Chennai has recently conferred some interesting titles to three of the Tamil oligarchy.

Karunanidhi has been conferred the ‘Periyar’ award, his son Stalin gets the ‘Karunanidhi’ award and loyalist Minister for Power Veeraswamy the ‘Annadurai’ award! Veeraswamy gushed, ‘This award is better than a Nobel Prize.’ Nothing surpasses this for sheer nobility!