Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Delhi's grandmother wants to spend the next five years writing thank you notes

So last year, the people of Delhi lost their mind and out of respect and deference to the elderly, gave Shiela Dikshit a third term so that she may complete her task of ruining Delhi.

While her finance minister presented his budget in the annual laughing club meet of the Delhi assembly, her government billed it as a "thanksgiving budget". Why did they do so? because they wanted to thank the people of Delhi for voting for the Congress twice in less than a year. I'm sure most Delhities will never forgive themselves. Although, it's not like they had a choice. It was either Grandma Dikshit or that guy who puts anyone he speaks to into a deep slumber for a hundred years.

So what great gifts did the government reward it's people with? Ten bucks and an e-card? More electricity? Better roads? Mandating that tofu be served along with the snake-infested mid-day meals in government schools?

No, actually.

They went about this in another direction.

Long, long ago, in 2005, when the earth wasn't dying so fast and Maddona had only one stolen kid from Africa, our diligent lawmakers gave themselves a gift of top of the line laptops and inkjet printers. Now, many of them were from the previous assembly and already had been allotted printers and laptops. But, somehow, most of them seemed to have "lost" or "misplaced" their computers and thus required a new one. Just like when you lose your car keys, you havta buy a new car! This whole exercise cost the taxpayer a measly sum of Rs. 51 Lakhs. Turns out, most of the MLA's didn't even know how to use their fancy computers. So let's fast forward to this year, when, to help all our MLA's find free porn sites which don't install too many spyware programs, the government of Delhi has given them an allowance of Rs. 7,500 to be paid monthly to a "data operator".

It's like Christmas in June for the citizens of Delhi.

Meanwhile, the government also promises to one day complete the Delhi State Cancer Institute which was supposed to be actually operational by 2006. Hey, at least they almost got it's website to work. The real thing will follow soon. Progress takes time, ya know.

Oh, and the government also wanted to open a super-hospital for liver treatment sometime in this decade. They even interviewed people for it last year. So what, eh? Cheer up. Most people with liver problems are alcoholics anyway. And they can follow former prime minister VP Singh's example and get treated on taxpayer's expense in London. You can make a vacation out of it. In the mornings they can dilate your liver and in the evenings you can have tea and scones with the Queen in the Buckingham Palace Gardens while the Duke and Prince Harry shout racist abuses at you.

Oh, and don't forget grandmother CM's crowning achievement. A BRT corridor which has actually caused more problems then it has attempted to fix. In fact, some say that it outlived it's usefulness even before it was built. However, as per grandma, that's just media generated talk. The Chief Minister even drove through the corridor during non-peak hours when there was mild traffic to prove that it works. Even if in reality it doesn't work anywhere in the world. If Sheila Dikshit says it does, than it does. She's very Chuck Norris about these things.

Even though this might seem like the government's flipping you the bird and pointing at you & laughing while simultaneously chanting "Gotcha for a third time, you stupid suckers!" over and over again, it's a show of appreciation.

As the great decider of democracy once said, ". . . fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again".

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

small offense taken...i have (loosely) worked with projects of BRTS, in ahmedabad, and studied their applications in many other places...and well, it is rather successful. when it is implemented properly.
though, yes, delhi sucked at the implementation part of it..
anyway, got no wise-cracks to (well...)crack.

Over Rated said...

@Aryan: Well, from what I experienced, it doesn't seem to work. Maybe other cities have had a better way of implementation?

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