I went to my friend who is a tailor. As I gave her my dress for stitching, she said ‘from this month the stitching charges are increased by 10%’I swiftly reacted ‘but why have you increased the cost? It almost comes to the cost of a ready made dress!’
That’s how it all started.
We had a casual discussion, which made me think a great deal.
We were discussing about the inflation in our prices, my friend was much worried about the rising oil prices I too agreed to her.
We discussed how this situation will make life tougher for upper middle class people like us. My friend stated that the 50% increase in prices of daily food products affected her monthly budget, and even her small business was getting into trouble due to this.
I asked her how her business was in trouble.
She has a small boutique. Her problem is due to the fact that the big shops have no trouble in increasing their prices, while small shops like hers find it hard to attract customers with high priced products.
One thing that was bothering me was, all this inflation stuff affects mainly the self employed middle class & upper middle class people.
Why the rest of the society is not bothered?
That geared me to think.
The low income groups gets all their basic stuffs for free (thanks to our government that gave them TV, rice and just forgot give them a decent work). This also makes them even more lazy and irresponsible, the poor remain poor. Anyways they don’t have much to loose. Recently my house maid threw her TV into garbage (note she didn’t give it to any one) saying that it was not working, if it was mine I would have at least tried repairing it! When I asked her about it, she simply said, ‘oh it was a free TV anyways I have another good one.’
Next the state government promises government employees on hike in their salary, so they are happily planning for their vacations and about their children’s college admission, even the gold rate is not going to worry them much.
As for the creamy layer, money is not an issue at all.
And the glamorous IT class also doesn’t worries about this issue; they have their own problems of job shifting, US visa problem, social partying, investing in shares etc
This may sound like just a cynical view of our society. But in truth it is not so.
Every one is happy about the slashed prices of air tickets, but not worried about the raise in food price! This sounds really odd to me.
I was recently visiting Calcutta, and was so shocked to see how the lifestyle was simple, easy and cost effective there compared to my city that’s Chennai. People there still use public transport and private vehicle charges are very nominal.
So who is responsible for this entire problem?
Many of us can humbly say that it is all due to our own mistakes, our selfishness- we the people are to be blamed.
Seriously are we the only ones to be blamed?
As one of our central minister says, are we eating more wheat rather than rice? Is that why the prices are going up?
Are we just going to have a good laugh at our crisis?
We do pay our taxes, we follow rules, we vote, we try to make everything right, we adjust, we work hard, we take responsibility, and we follow ethics…
So are we the ones to be blamed for the price inflation?
What are the politicians and the government servants doing?
Instead of worrying about their vote bank and personal economy, aren’t they supposed to take care of these problems?
If we have to be blamed for all these issues,
Then what’s the point in electing a representative? Have we totally lost hope in democracy? But yes we are to be blamed, for not fighting for our privileges.
We are to be blamed for not forcing our politicians to do their duty.
By the way, I took back my dress material, saying to my friend ‘I will stitch this dress latter ok’