How to set an example

Take a few minutes to figure out where the children of all our political leaders study. Pic/ Getty Images

English is now a problem for the men currently in charge of managing India. It is an evil language, apparently, and one that must be exorcised from textbooks across the land so more suitable languages can take its place. We don't know what these languages are, but they will undoubtedly figure it out eventually.

Parents must accept this without question, and force their children to comply because this fabulous new idea has come from the minds of some of the most brilliant people ever to walk the Earth. These people may not have won Nobel Prizes, and most of them may never have darkened the doors of any institute of learning either, but they have India's best interests at heart, which ultimately, is all that matters. It's weird how all their children continue to study in English though and how so many of them have mysteriously managed to raise enough money to send their offspring to the Big, Bad, West where everything and everyone is an enemy of India.

Take a few minutes to figure out where the children of all our political leaders study, and what they study, before comparing that information with what they keep telling the rest of us at every opportunity. Everything that is supposedly good for us is never quite the same for people doling out that advice. We must make sacrifices, forget about offering our children access to an education that matters, while they can do the exact opposite because no one wants to call them out.

Look at how they dealt with COVID-19 too, the minute it managed to get past lax security measures and into their air-conditioned cabins. We were asked to fight it with yoga and Ayurveda, or with drinks made of turmeric and honey, while they promptly checked into private hospitals and begged doctors for medicine from the West. Naturally, none of them was turned away for a lack of hospital beds either.

Our bizarre VIP culture has long been a problem, but it's surprising how little things change. I think about those jokes that crop up like clockwork whenever a politician turns up somewhere in India, prompting hasty makeovers and clean streets that are otherwise allowed to sink into decrepitude for the rest of the year. 'Hope they visit again so we get a new pavement,' everyone laughs, even though the joke is on us. Our own taxes aren't used to offer us better services unless an elected representative condescends to turn up, and all we can do is shrug.

What politicians need to do is put their ill-gotten money where their mouths are and show us that they have faith in the things they want us to believe in. If they want us to fight a pandemic by beating utensils, that's what they should do on television when the virus attacks them. If they want us to trust public healthcare, those are the hospitals they should visit themselves instead of flying to the West for treatment. If they want us to uninstall Chinese apps and stop buying goods made in that country, they must tell us why they continue to accept funding from the Chinese for their own pet projects. And if they want our children to give up on the English language, they should admit their own children to a Sanskrit-medium institution first, assuming they even exist.

It may seem trivial to try and put a stop to our servility and pander to the delusion that politicians are important people with weighty issues on their mind. The reality is more prosaic, given that it is increasingly the dumbest and most morally bankrupt among us who gravitate to a life in Parliament. If these people are important, why are the rest of us comfortable with being unimportant?

It will be interesting to see what happens as more ministers succumb to a virus that doesn't distinguish between rich or poor, VIP or servant. We should also call out those who have separate rules for us and themselves because it is only by shaming them in public that we may hope for some measure of change.

I am not optimistic about this, obviously. Nothing this entrenched will change overnight, given how easily we turn over and allow our rights to be trampled by people who shout louder than the rest of us. Maybe I shouldn't be surprised by any of these incidents either. This is India we are discussing, after all, a land where all standards have always been double standards.

When he isn't ranting about all things Mumbai, Lindsay Pereira can be almost sweet. He tweets @lindsaypereira
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The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper

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