Unchallenged omission

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 Indias 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 countrys 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 countrys 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 boys skin grows whiter, his smile brightens and his hopes rise. The message: fair skin is a prerequisite for success, complain the…