What puzzles me is why nobody notices that when he moves into his government accommodation, Indian taxpayers will be paying for him to live in much greater style. The Taj Mahal Hotel is a cheap hostel compared to living in a bungalow in Lutyens’ Delhi. Only the richest Indians can live in the style in which our senior politicians and officials live. And, as I have suggested in this space before, the real sacrifice that our politicians can make is to surrender their palatial houses in Lutyens’ Delhi and move into lesser accommodation. If security is a problem, then Cabinet ministers can move into the cottages that already exist on the grounds of Rashtrapati Bhavan, as can Sonia Gandhi and her family. I repeat ad nauseam that we can no longer afford for our politicians and bureaucrats to live like billionaires, but since I cannot see this change happening in my lifetime, may I humbly suggest other austerity measures that would really make a difference.

Let us sell Air India instead of pumping thousands more crores of taxpayers’ money into an airline that can never improve. When this is done, let us sell Doordarshan or at least stop wasting money on its unwatched and unwatchable English channels. Then let us close down the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting. It is a relic from a time when information could be controlled and when the average Indian could not distinguish between news and propaganda. It has been irrelevant since satellite TV arrived and is now watched only by those unlucky Indians who have not yet been given the choice of cable and satellite TV.

When the Prime Minister has rid us of obviously useless public enterprises, he should set the Planning Commission the task of listing the public sector companies that have become bottomless pits for taxpayers’ money. Let us sell them and if the commies start ranting and raging about selling the ‘family silver’, let them be offered first to the Government of West Bengal. If decades of socialism have taught us one thing, it is that the dead hand of government must be kept firmly away from the business and service sectors. What better reason than an austerity drive to sell useless government companies? The money thus saved can be invested into a massive new programme to build infrastructure.

Indian farmers do not need cosmetic drought relief; they need real infrastructure to help them escape their shameful, hideous poverty. They need roads that would lead to new markets so that half of what they grow would no longer rot. They need irrigation facilities that would stop their reliance on the monsoon. And, they need water management techniques that would help them better use every drop of water they get. What difference is it going to make if the Minister of Agriculture and Sonia Gandhi travel Economy and if sweet, austere Rahul baba takes a train to Ludhiana that gets stoned en route? He is a sweet fellow though. I loved the way he pointed to his simple, white kurta on national television and said, dimpling proudly, ‘I am always austere. Politicians should always be austere.’

He is right. Politicians should always be austere, since they are there to lead by example. But, so should governance. We could even afford for our politicians to be reckless and extravagant if they would help cut down the cost of governance. There are thousands of ways in which government could curb spending on routine administration and we never, ever hear about them.

It is outrageous that nearly all our money goes towards paying salaries and that mostly the people we employ to run our country are clerks. Why does it surprise us that India is today one of the worst run countries in the world? Why does it surprise us that even when it comes to something as serious as austerity, all that our leaders can come up with are token gestures that they hope will make them look good in the eyes of starving farmers. In these hard times we need more than gestures. We need real austerity.