WHO SHOULD BE A SPENDTHRIFT

Have a look at this ...

Salary & Govt. Concessions for a Member of Parliament (MP)

Monthly Salary : 12,000

Expense for Constitution per month : 10,000

Office expenditure per month : 14,000

Traveling concession (Rs. 8 per km) : 48,000 ( eg.For a visit from kerala to Delhi & return: 6000 km)

Daily DA TA during parliament meets : 500/day

Charge for 1 class (A/C) in train: Free (For any number of times)
(All over India )

Charge for Business Class in flights : Free for 40 trips / year (With wife or P.A.)

Rent for MP hostel at Delhi : Free

Electricity costs at home : Free up to 50,000 units

Local phone call charge : Free up to 1 ,70,000 calls.

TOTAL expense for a MP [having no qualification] per year : 32,00,000 [i.e. 2.66 lakh/month]

TOTAL expense for 5 years : 1,60,00,000

For 534 MPs, the expense for 5 years :
8,54,40,00,000 (nearly 855 crores)

AND THE PRIME MINISTER IS ASKING THE HIGHLY QUALIFIED, OUT PERFORMING CEOs TO CUT DOWN THEIR SALARIES…..

This is how all our tax money is been swallowed and price hike on our regular commodities.......

And this is the present condition of our country:

855 crores could make their life livable !!
Think of the great democracy we have..............
PLEASE FORWARD THIS MESSAGE TO ALL REAL CITIZENS OF INDIA ..
but,
STILL Proud to be INDIAN

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So ... who do you think should be cautious in their remunarations and expenditures? In fact, the reason the Women's Reservation for Parliament is held up because some of our MPs now want proportional increase in Members to accomodate the Women MPs and thus protect their own status. Thus, there is demand for probably 200 more MPs and their astronomical expenses from tax payers monies. This will lead to even more expenses during electionioring and so on. Who is paying for this? What are they delivering? What relief have they given to the bottom 300 million of India who are getting impatient after a long wait for sixty years? How can the Prime Minister parrot platitudes to the masses and suggest living style to the true wealth generators but say nothing to the 'wealth destroyers' and simultaneously create an imagined rift between the haves and havenots? Where is the equity from this intellectual?

Please pass this message on your family, friends, colleagues, well wishers and true Indians. Let us build a citizens opinion on this and reach a concensus on how tax payers monies are spent and how outcome is delivered to the impatient millions.

RBI press release

BANKNOTE MISUSE

I am amazed at the press release: 2007-2008 / 1186, that the RBI has issued on Wed. 12^th March 2008 concerning the defacement of bank notes, making of garlands of notes, using them for decoration of pandals, etc. This can be read at their website: http://rbidocs.rbi.org.in/rdocs/PressRelease/PDFs/83436.pdf

It is further reported by the print media that RBI have stopped all banks from stapling of bank notes, making notations thereon and other similar defacement. Now the RBI wants to target private defacement saying that bank notes should be respected as they are symbol of sovereign India. I believe they have even tried their hands at screening short films with this theme. All this is for the general good and should normally call for felicitation of the RBI. However I am amazed that they feel that a few such attempts will get the job done. Obviously they lack the basic marketing skills of the private sector and knowledge of levering the TV media. This current press release shows that they have no intention of improving on their skills to reach the masses in India.

I wish the RBI could first get the large nationalised banks to abide by such decent behaviour. I have attached here a picture showing the SBI has issued a bundle of Rs. 100 denomination notes, with the date stamp of 15^th April 2008 which is very obviously defaced with large size multiple staples. This is still a very common practice in smaller towns as the same picture shows The Shirpur Peoples' Coop Bank Ltd. doing the same thing. How's that for effort on part of the RBI?

If the RBI after years of effort, cannot even get SBI to follow common sense principles and, the Bank Employee / Officers Unions who are so eager to strike work for imagined loss of stature, cannot enforce such basic discipline, how is this world renowned national institution expecting to make headway with the 'ignorant' masses in India?

It is obvious that the RBI has to spend millions of tax payer's money, to print millions of currency notes. Could they not spend some of these millions to make a long term professional marketing plan to reach the people all over India? I am sure some of the leading advertising and media agencies, could give them a 'cut rate' for this social responsibility plan. Take a reality check RBI, the tax payers of India desire accountability.

Another issue. The extensive website of RBI has lots of snail mail details, lots of reports and bulletins, lots of web links and even some phone codes. All this is sharing information one way, top-down approach, one way traffic. Has it occurred to the top honcho's that two way streets are quicker? Could I hope to see some email ids of executive officials whereby public who is so enabled can reach out with their responses, without going thru the laborious method of typing out letters? I could not find any email id at the RBI website, hence this note to the print media for publicity.

Praful Vora. praful.vora@rediffmail.com 10^th May 2008.

MAHATMA GANDHI'S TALISMAN

"I will give you a talisman.
Whenever you are in doubt, or when
the self becomes too much with
you, apply the following test. Recall
the face of the poorest and the
weakest man / woman whom you
may have seen, and ask yourself, if
the step you contemplate is going to
be of any use to him / her. Will he / she
gain anything by it? Will it
restore him / her to a control over
his / her own life and destiny? In
other words, will it lead to swaraj for the hungry and
spiritually starving millions?

Then you will find your doubts and
your self melt away."

(One of the last notes left behind by Gandhi in 1948, expressing his deepest social thought).