This morning, I was aghast looking at the headlined story in The Economic Times about Chidambaram's antics in reviving the Indian economy. I was not aghast at his antics, but at the graphic accompanying it. It showed a progressively ageing and shrinking Mahatma Gandhi. It might have been a clever idea of a photoshopper wrongly employed in the ET art department. But it was cheap and unforgivable to feature the Father of the Nation in a situation we have inherited by steadily abandoning all the virtues he extolled from the time he wrote his seminal work Hind Swaraj.
Gandhi wrote Hind Swaraj long back while on a ship to South Africa, writing frenzily so he would not miss recording his various ideas on uplifting the poor. The only clever thing our politicians and economists have done in this area is to revise the PowerPoint slides and graphs about the Indian BPL figures.
Well, if this ET thing was bad, let me tell you something else which was worse. I once met a big Sardarji tycoon in Chandigarh. He was running a large number of schools and colleges, and he had become stinkingly rich. When the subject of corruption came up in our conversation, he said that he was all for it. He said that if there was anyone to blame for corruption, it was Mahatma Gandhi. You see, he is constantly smiling at you from the Indian currency notes, reminding you that money is the most important thing in life and morals be damned!!!! And being the Father of the Nation, he deserves all our respect to be paid by accepting bribes.
I also recently read that Pakistan's secret printing presses that are busy in counterfeiting Indian currency notes are getting some Pak. governmental support nowadays because the counterfeit Indian rupees do not profit them enough any more, also givens their rising printing and circulating costs. That is because of the poor exchange rate they get for the free-falling Indian rupee. They say they no longer print 500 INR notes but only 1000 INR notes.
I just heard an Osho joke about Mulla Nasruddin. Mulla buys a lottery ticket, and wins a fortune. When he goes to claim his sum, the shopkeeper gives him a big wad of notes. Mulla starts counting and examining each note carefully. The shopkeeper is angry and asks, 'what Mulla, do you suspect my notes to be counterfeit?' Mulla apologizes, 'no friend, I just want to make sure I am not getting back any of MY notes that I bought the lottery ticket with'. Those notes he had brought from Pakistan.
We are a whole society pursuing counterfeit values.
