so a CAG report had come up a while back and it said that Reliance Jio was given an advantage of INR 3367Cr (or $530 million) by being allowed to land voice calls on the broadband spectrum…. the report as expected was rubbished, suppressed and conveniently forgotten…. however that old headline yesterday got me thinking…. is free really free?
The whole country has been going all gaga about the amazing amazing value being offered by Reliance through their Jio offering. They have ruthlessly slayed all competition, and whatever is left is clamouring for corners where they can somehow hide and survive. What happens 6 months to an year down the line when there is no competitor left after BSNL, after being termed loss making and lethargic is also sold off to Reliance? We’re heading back to those times where there was just one service provider, one TV channel one cartoon on the TV (oh ok now it’s just Mr. Juicer and we can’t call him a cartoon as it’ll just rebound on us as what else “anti-national”). It’ll be a monopoly and what is free today will come back to recover past dues with customers not having any option whatsoever. It may not happen and we might continue to enjoy free internet, voice calls and everything else oh and unicorns farting rainbows…. who am I kidding we all know businesses, and specially conglomerates like Reliance, are made by crushing the bones and souls of citizens not by nurturing them.
Coming back to is free really free. So if this purported loss to the exchequer is considered we actually stood to gain 3367 Cr INR had the undue favour to the election campaign funder number one not been extended. Considering 1% tax paying public we have been robbed of Rs. 2693 per head (per tax payer…. total tax payers is 1% of population so 1.25Cr people…. distribute 3367 Cr among 1.25Cr people comes to 2693 per head). So what we’re actually considering free is being paid for by the taxpayers because had it not been for the undue benefit given this money would have helped reduce the tax burden.
Actually it’s not paid for just by the tax payers alone. When I went to get a gas cylinder refill a couple of days back I had to pay 655 bucks. The last refill slip showed 587 rupees. So essentially an increase of over 11.5% within 45 days. The cost of chicken has gone from 140 bucks a kilo to 200 bucks a kilo over the past 2-3 months, mutton used to be 400 bucks a kilo and is now 460 bucks a kilo, tomatoes 31 bucks a kilo to 42 a kilo in under 3 months. I could go on and on. Earlier price rise used to be 1 or 2 rupees now we talk in nothing less than a 20-30% rise every few weeks. The logic of the government, when the petroleum prices in the market were falling but taxes kept on increasing on petroleum products, was that this is being done so that FE deficit can be bridged and we can keep prices stable in the longer run. Today when international crude prices are rising pray why do the prices in India not stay stable or even fall? Should not the government now relax the taxes and levies and insulate population from the fluctuations? So why the gradual increase in price every fortnight or so? Because you my dear dumb citizen are being given a smoke and mirrors show. Free free free Jio free look look that way while we dig a tunnel elsewhere!
Give up subsidy ads apparently cost more than the actual savings from subsidy bill curtailment. But Mr. Juicer made it a bullet point in his iDay speech from the Red fort which dumbbakhts (play on kambakhts and dumb bhakts) lapped up like the pakwaan they have so become accustomed to lapping up lately.
We are paying for all this, we the people. Systematically all form of dissent, opposition, counter view is being ruthlessly extinguished. Once all the lights have been turned off true darkness will prevail all around. When there is no one to speak up against the poor and wrong policies of this regime guess who will pay the price? Today jokes on Rahul, Laloo, Didi, Akhilesh and Kejriwal give us so much joy online, on social media, on TV, in print. Imagine the day when there are no Rahuls and Kejriwals to provide an alternative. What if on that day Mr. Juicer says “mitron kal se kachchey pant ke upar pehne jaayenge” (friends from tomorrow wear your under wears on top of your pants). Like dumb fucks that’s what you would be walking around doing the very next day. No one to oppose no one to question. Some would say “no no he wouldn’t say that”…. well to them I say “notes ban was a trailer and a much contained trailer at that because we still had a significantly small amount of opposition left over in this country, imagine if there was zero opposition… for a second come out of your brainwashed stupor and think”. We pay, for all that is free and this current euphoria of having found someone who is “our man” will soon turn into horrifying disgust when we turn around and say “what have we done!”. Giving absolute power into the hands of a single person is suicidal for the nation, lets face it Mr. Juicer is the only poll plank on which the whole BJP sarkar is standing today. Yes Mr. Juicer is actually controlled by this clique of profiteering businessmen and psychopathic religious bigots but the fact remains that he is the face that the country has come to identify with a brighter tomorrow. A brighter tomorrow which is for the most part a very crude play of smokes and mirrors
What’s appalling is that this is not something that’s happening in India alone. It’s a worldwide phenomenon. The more adept and clear we become about how to succeed in life the more self assured, self centered ass holes we turn into. Case in point is Uber and PayTM.
Accumulation of wealth is what this is going to further achieve.
We all know where that is going to take us, down a slippery slope on a toboggan without brakes. Distribution of wealth needs to be addressed on a war footing to prevent wars. The answer is not more industrialisation and more “development”. The answer is more humanisation and de-materialisation.
We pay, for everything that we assume is free, in one way or the other we pay, and the terrifying thing is that we end up paying way more than the actual cost of what we get in the whole smoke and mirrors of “freebies”.