Thursday, January 10, 2008

President's paycheck

President Patil's register rang aloud ka-ching, today. Apparently GOI doubled her paystub. That's nice. No complaints. Well, except one.

President Kalam, the previous guy in Rashtrapati Bhawan, was notorious for his honesty and ascetic lifestyle. True story: Kalam paid 3 lakh rupees( worth 3 Tata Nanos) towards the bill, for one, O-N-E, visit by his relatives to his official residence in Delhi, his secretary Nair disclosed after his retirement. Those poor folks visited him only once during the five yrs.; taxpayers would have happily lifted that burden, as a recognition of Kalam's remarkable record in office-- but no, the proud President would've none of it.

But as luck would have it, it was too good to last. I mean having a President like Kalam. Vengeful fate thrusted clueless Pratibha Patil on the nation. And this lady has been making full use of her office ever since...for personal purposes. Patil recently took her family, 15 people in all (some family!), on a taxpayer funded trip to Andaman. Not just that, few trees had the misfortune of coming in way of family revelry and had to be sacrificed. Of course Patil won't disappoint us by paying even a dime for her family junket, shrewdly undertaken alongside some official trip, but you would think that the heavily burdened aam aadmi would desist from rewarding such Presidential indulgence. Not quite.

Representatives, elected by the very common man, have decided to richly reward Patil. While there's no one to rescue the farmers on suicidal binge(Vidarbha), children dying of hunger(Vidarbha again), from Patil's backyard no less. Neither the PM Manmohan Singh nor the President, are bound to loose sleep over it.

Do we people really deserve them?

Since many people seem to reach this page looking for American President's paycheck, please check this for the same.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Whatever we've done to deserve such a president. Dr. Kalam's conduct was in such stark contrast bringing so much respect to him. His tenure showed us what can the president do for the nation even with the limited powers.