Samikhsya Bureau
After the phase one election over the political parties have raised promises a notch higher. In the sizzling heat the poll freebies have almost laced the political horizon all over the country.
Not to lag behind, the political leaders in Odisha have also jacked up their bids to woo the voters. Reportedly, the Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan has taken a step forward to promise the people at an election rally that if the Bharatiya Janta Party comes to power, it will provide rice, dal and salt at Rs.1. Which is ostensibly an attempt to counter the rice at one rupee per kg which the BJD government has allegedly made political capital out of the scheme in which central government shoulders the major burden of Rs.29 whereas the State contributes only Rs.1 p/kg.
But under the promise made by Pradhan, people would get a combo of, rice, Dal and salt. Five kilogramme of rice and half a kg of salt and Dal each. For a state like Odisha where poverty still remains to be a cyclic phenomenon, the package of rice-dal-salt can play a catalyst role to woo voters.
All said and done the moot question that sticks its neck out is where the country is being led to ? Be it Odisha’s rice at Rs.1 p/kg or now the three-in-one combo of rice dal and salt at Rs.1 or Rs.2, It is all fine and sounds ok politically but at the same time, it is no less intriguing when one thinks of the gradual collapse of an empire of work culture and the impact it would have on our economy.
Should it be unwise to fear that, if the larger chunk of the population is asked to thrive on alms, then what happens to the work force. If the system that rules gets an individual tagged as one-rupee category then why on earth that man shall ever crave for work as a means to live, rather than making that an optional core.
Whereas the common refrain among the majority is that, creation of job for at least 20 days in a month is any time a better succour than rice at Rs. 1 p/kg or the combo. Are we trying to put a seal on people’s back as ‘ dependents ‘ like their political benefactors who rejoice their affluence built on the misery of the majority ?
In the name of politics or election freebies it is time the so called rulers refrain from such perilous recourses and destroy culture of work. What can be better described from Russell Baker’s one liner “ don’t try to make children grow up to be like you, or they may do it “.
