Bitter suite

When you do not practise what you preach,you should either change your habits or get off your pontificating high horse. It is reasonably assumed that you cannot,or should not,persist with the dichotomy. That two high-profile UPA ministers,one of cabinet rank,have been staying at five-star hotels for more than three months is not,this newspaper will maintain,a case for moral or legal rebuke. Anybody with the requisite means is within his rights to stay at a five-star hotel or build a palace unto himself. But External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna at the ITC Maurya and his MoS Shashi Tharoor at the Taj sit against the stark backdrop of Congress exhortations on austerity and sacrifice. Congress MPs are being asked to part with a fifth of their salary for drought relief (itself a meagre amount,but thats another matter) as their colleagues in the Ministry of External Affairs are running up,presumably,bills that beggar those salaries manifold. Perhaps its pertinent to ask who should be more embarrassed the two ministers or the party itself?

Itll be argued that Krishna and Tharoor are paying out of their own pockets and not squandering taxpayers money. Its also claimed that they are awaiting their official residences to be ready. But these miss the point. What these ministers,and by extension the party,seem to have forgotten is the responsibility and limits that public service imposes on one beyond paying lip service,that is. Theres justifiably a strong element of symbolism and show associated with elected public office. How does it sound to the Indian public and to the diplomatic world that Indias foreign ministers currently reside at this or that hotel in their official capacity,or that the senior one is holding meetings in his hotels coffee shop?

But if the two ministers are a fit case for any lessons,its in propriety,not austerity. If the party needs a lesson,its in the need to debunk its specious rhetoric of sacrifices for the aam aadmi. Austerity,in its latest avatar,is a chimera that the Congress has manufactured,rather anachronistically,to package itself as the party of the masses,partaking of their drought-induced suffering. What the party overlooks is how the aam aadmi prefers sincerity and action; how increasingly impatient he is with political posturing. It profits both elected representatives and constituents if high- and hollow-sounding words and small acts of frugality are substituted or supported by more consequential delivery mechanisms. In fact,the Congress can practise all the austerity it wants just stop bleeding-heart preaching on the values of the same.