India has the largest number of hungry people in the world. Starvation is also killer no.1 in India, not malaria or AIDS. But criminal display of wealth by top politicians and business people is a routine phenomenon during the wedding seasons. The colossal wastage of food, flowers and decoration materials thrown into garbage yards hours after the event is over leave the people gaping in horrifying wonder. Only recently, an Additional Sessions judge awarded a 25-month jail term to a wedding party guest for firing in the air at an insanely lavish wedding party and killing the groom’s uncle. The judge had strongly expressed desire to have weddings celebrated with utmost austerity so as to keep people trusting businessmen and politicians. Indian authorities do not seem to have woken up by the recent Pakistani Supreme Court’s ruling of strictly ‘one-dish’ dinner and no show-off things at weddings, no matter how mighty the host is. The court made it clear that flashy expensive weddings in a poor country are morally wrong and can be treated as a crime against humanity.
Shockingly in India, on December 3 and 4 this year, no one could travel by plane from any place to Nagpur. Nitin Gadkari had stolen all tickets to have his guests transported to the city. Ten thousand guests had congregated to eat and make merry. Gadkari had chartered 50 planes to have the so-called VVIPs ferried to the wedding location at a time when the middleclass and poor people were committing suicide for failing to arrange funds due to demonetisation. Most surprisingly, Chaiwala Modi, whose 95-year-old, wheelchair-borne mother had been in queue to collect money from a bank, has chosen to keep quiet over the issue, which people have not taken well. He could have asked Gadkari to desist from a glaringly wasteful and vulgar show of wealth.
In Odisha too, most politicians are shameless in matters of flaunting wealth and power. Biju Patnaik hated to show off; he even avoided opening and stone-laying ceremonies. Even crafty JB Patnaik never committed the crime of being lavish at any family wedding. His guests never exceeded a hundred in number.
The seemingly popular Modi administration has to bring in place a law to ensure a handful of rich and powerful do not flaunt their might at weddings or private family functions. If caught erring, they be discarded like garbage. Most people have seen how poor little boys and girls slugging at odd hours at lavish functions. They carry lamps and other heavy objects in the procession, serve food and drinks and run errands to return home with a meagre wage and empty stomachs. Helpless and hungry kids are invariably seen salvaging edible stuff from heaps of wasted food at roadsides.
Now, Pakistan is rated higher in the moral upkeep game. Their Supreme Court has made sure all District Magistrates, Deputy Commissioners are watchful and enforcing the order of ‘austere, one-dish wedding meal’. But India is lax and casual on this grave issue, which is a pity.
All truly powerful and wealthy people are humble because they know the human virtues well enough.
The President of Uruguay since 2009, Jose Mojica, donates 90 per cent of his salary to charity and has ditched the lavish Presidential palace. He lives in his ramshackle farm with his wife and rides a 30-year-old Vespa scooter to work. His wife and he jointly grow grains and vegetables for survival. Similarly, the first female president of Malawi, Joyce Banda, sold off the Presidential jet and the fleet of 60 Mercedes limousines in an effort to steer the then-struggling country to financial austerity. She enjoys flying by commercial planes as an ordinary citizen. The money earned from selling the plane went to feeding more than 1 million people.
Even Nepal’s short-term Prime Minister Sushil Koirala has been widely lauded for denying all Prime Ministerial perks because the country has too many poor people. He lived in a rented house for long and now, when in the capital, he stays with his brother instead of a hotel.
According to Oxfam, by 2016, the combined wealth of the richest 1 per cent could exceed that of the other 99 per cent of people in the world. And while many factors are involved in this frightening prediction, tax and policy, climate change and globalisation, for example, sometimes inequality is most glaring when world leaders themselves flaunt a lifestyle more suited to a multibillionaire than a leader who represents the interest of his or her people.
Even Father Francis, the world’s first latin American Pope, altered his role to “foremost a pastor to the flock, not a king” while visiting the US. Francis has been vocal about global poverty, plight of refugees, even climate change, to the disdain of some American conservatives. In his widely-publicised visit to the U.S., Pope Francis passed up the chance to lunch with lawmakers, choosing, instead, to dine with Washington DC’s homeless.
last of many, Warren Buffett, the business magnate, widely considered the most successful investor in the world with his mindboggling wealth of $66.7 billion, still pretty much lives the same kind of life as he did before becoming a billionaire. His frugal ways are legendary. Buffett has lived in the same house in Omaha, which he bought in 1958, and has expressed disdain for splurging on luxury cars and items. He has pledged 99 per cent of his fortune to charity and is a vocal advocate for economic equality, having publicly urged lawmakers to raise taxes on him and the rest of the 1 per cent.
So, Indian brags, mostly wealthy politicians and stinking rich businessmen, apart from the clergy and the priestly class, have a lot to learn from the Pakistani Supreme Court, Presidents of Uruguay and Malawi, a former Nepali Prime Minister, the most revered Pope and the incredibly human-hearted businessman called Warren Buffet. Most fortunately, we have a Buffet in India, Azim Premji, who lives for the poor.
Hopefully, the Modi team does something like Pakistan in preventing wasteful, lavish weddings in India, where the 60 per cent poor are not sure of a square meal on the morrow.
1 In Odisha, the Jagannath Temple is always in news mainly because the servitor misconduct is getting worse by the day. The Government has set up a commission to investigate into critical situation with the sole view to coming up with a robust devotee-friendly system in place. But the commission, though headed by a retired High Court judge, has attracted virtually no public attention mainly because of a vague ‘brief or commission’ and the complicated mechanism for people’s response. The brief is grossly deficient: it has considered critical issues of temple security, rituals of the deities, devotee amenities, training and amenities for servitor families, any other thing for best management of the temple. The whole action began when unruly servitors misbehaved with senior administrators and journalists on the day of the last Car Festival. Some servitors, who have grown larger than life due to television coverage and political patronage and become rich with temple wages and bribes, needed fixing.
The temple Act has to be logically amended as per times like in Tirupati and Maata Vaishnodevi temple management reforms. It is realised by the world that abolition of hereditary rights of the servitors would be the foremost step to turn the temple environment clean and devotee- friendly. Entry permission be given only to the servitors-on-duty and not to a sole more to dress and pose like a servitor to deceive people. The maximum number per day does not exceed 75 servitors. The aspiring servitors born in the community have to take and pass exams with impressive scores in scriptural knowledge and behaviour skills. Servitors chosen shall work on salary with routine service conditions of suspension, demotion and dismissal.
Hundi collection and other hassle-free earnings would be spent on free devotee accommodation, Prasad distribution, personal effects safekeeping (footwear, bags, etc.), travel from transport terminals, toilets and emergency healthcare.
The commission has also to recommend fulltime administration like in the Tirupati and Maata Vaishnodevi temples. The District Magistrate is the chief administrator because he is 24 hours alert with support teams.
The commission has scared respondents away by seeking formal affidavits instead of plain paper suggestions and proposals. The time is going to be up after several extensions. The authorities would do great good by accepting plain paper notes instead of dumping strict judicial formalities on the ordinary public. People have begun suspecting this commission to end up as badly as many others before with colossal waste of scarce public money.
The part-time chief administrator has organised a number of servitor trips to other big temples of India to make them aware of what is good for devotees and themselves, but nothing has ever worked. Strong laws can only make them better professionals at the service of the deities. Nothing else ever will.
(The writer is a core member of Transparency International, Odisha)