What aam admi is Congress talking about?

You know I am tired of the political parties and especially the Congress talking about the aam admi. None of the political parties have any interest in the welfare of the aam admi or the common citizen of this country. Inspite of being the owner of this country, the common man is completely ignored except when it comes to elections.

I was shocked to hear that the Delhi Government led by our so called dynamic chief minister Shiela Dikshit has increase bus fares by more than 50% and the bus pass that my peon used from Rs. 415 to Rs. 800. The reason given for this hefty increase was that DTC was losing money.

Do you think that by increasing the bus fares DTC will become profitable? I can guarantee you that it will not. What will happen is DTC will continue to make losses. All that will happen is that the additional tax payers money generated by the increase in fares will end up in the pockets of the people running the organization as before. Now the DTC officials will have more money to waste. If previously they had Rs. 100 to waste, now with Rs. 150 in their hands, they will waste Rs. 150.

I doubt if you will come across organizations which are losing money when the demand of their products is high. I did come across one such organization in the private corporate sector. This company had one of the best manufacturing plants. The demand for its products was so high that customers were willing to pay in advance to the company to manufacture the product, and most of them did. Yet the company made losses and I think ultimately closed down or was sold. The cause of this was total mismanagement.

The same is true of DTC. There is a fantastic demand for their products and yet they make losses. If they were running the organization properly and still making losses, then the Congress government had every right to increase the bus fares. But the ground reality is that if you ask the aam admi which the Congress is so concerned about, he will tell you that the availability of DTC buses is extremely poor and that they have to still use private buses and pay extra if they want to commute to their place of work on time.

Now is there shortage of buses? I don’t think so. I can DTC where to find more buses. All they have to do is look in their repair shop. I think half of their buses would be standing idle in their workshop for repairs. I am sure money is being spent on repairs but the repairs will not happen. I am sure all of us know how that works.

Now I would not have faulted the government if they had taken action to also streamline the working of DTC as well as taken action to rid the organization of corruption or that they will spend the additional money to increase the availability of DTC buses by repairing the ones standing in the workshop. As usual, all the politicians and government officials want to do is collect money but not do any work to show results.

The cause of all the problems with DTC is not that they do not have funds. As we all know, the cause is corruption and unaccountability of anybody in a government organization including DTC. We all read abot how the DTC drivers and conductor were in cahoots with the private bus operators.

What does the government do? Very simple. Trouble and harass the aam admi. I think Shiel Dikshit should actually talk to people who travel by buses and find out what that extra Rs. 400 that they have to spend means to them. But then Shiela Dikshit is busy talking to the most needy people like Manu Sharma whose business empire is suffering and because of which he is not able to serve the common aam admi. Oh! I forgot the “trickle-down” theory of the Congress government, that is, “serve the khas admi to serve the aam admi.”

So I ask Madam Shiel Dikshit that either she give back something in return to the aam admi for the extra money charged or stop taking money out of their pockets which they so desperately need for their “roti” and I am not even considering their need for “kapra” and “makan.”

As I have said in my website www.vote2change.com, the root cause of all our problems are just three – corruption, no accountability of government and the legal system. Of course, corruption in our country is the major root cause. In terms of the Pareto’s Law (80/20 rule), you remove corruption and you will solve 80% of the problems that the aam admi of this country faces. You name the problem and I will tell you how corruption is involved in creating the problem.

Avinash Narula