The Hindu : Columns / Sainath : The austerity of the affluent

Here is an excellent piece by P Sainath which was published in The Hindu in May 2012 about the sham of austerity that our leaders practice. His criticism of Mr Montek Singh Ahluwalia has been unrelenting. He points out that he has spent 274 days in 42 foreign trips in a 7 year tenure. Between May and October 2011 Mr Ahluwalia spent 18 days abroad at the cost of Rs 2.02 Lakh per  day. All this while he was defending a very low BPL line for India.  There are other who have been pointed out in this article.

I am beginning to come to a conclusion that our economic policy makers seem to have a revolving door with IMF and World Bank and are out of touch with the reality of our country. Their Neo-liberal policies may well entice the middle class and greatly favour the upper class but they do not seem to carry the majority lower class with them. Kaushik Basu previous chief economic advisor to GOI who famously said that bribe giving should be legalized is currently with World Bank. Mr Ahluwalia has served on IMF in past. Our current chief economic advisor Raghuram Rajan is also from IMF. We seem to have great talent of Indians doing well in these organization. But the difficulty is that when they join GOI they also bring with them a baggage of thinking which is prevalent in IMF and WB which is perhaps out of touch with the reality of India which Sainath makes us aware off.

The article by P Sainath is well worth reading....
The Hindu : Columns / Sainath : The austerity of the affluent