5 min readMay 17, 2026 06:28 AM IST
First published on: May 17, 2026 at 06:28 AM IST
If there is one thing that makes me instantly suspicious, it is when political leaders make appeals to us citizens in the name of patriotism. What always comes to mind is that old warning from the British political thinker Samuel Johnson. As long ago as the eighteenth century he noticed that ‘Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel’. This is why it disturbed me a little when the Prime Minister while making his appeal for ‘austerity’ urged us citizens of India to start tightening our belts in the name of patriotism. Or ‘desh bhakti’ as we like to call it since it evokes love of our beloved Bharat Mata instead of mere patriotism.
We all know that these are hard times not just for India but for the world. And that it is not the fault of our own dear leader that his dream for making our country fully ‘developed’ by 2047 could now be seriously endangered. It was in any case an ambitious goal considering that nearly half of our citizens survive on subsidised grain from the government. And our women are so very poor that they are inclined these days to vote for any political party that offers them pocket money of as little as Rs 1,500 a month.
In the Maharashtra election, I witnessed with my own eyes how this turned the tide in favour of the incumbent BJP/Shiv Sena government. So effective are these election time handouts that there is not a political party now who does not use this method to win elections. I feel the need to point out here to our revered political leaders that this kind of cynical trickery is certainly the opposite of patriotism. The money for this election time bribery comes out of funds that it would be far more patriotic to use on: building real assets like roads, schools, hospitals and improving the appalling state of urban slums.
The Prime Minister’s appeal for ‘patriotic’ austerity does not affect me too much. I work from home and rarely buy gold. I will be personally affected by restrictions on foreign travel as it will make it much harder for me to see my exiled son even once a year. The Prime Minister’s appeal to farmers to use less fertiliser worried me because I am old enough to remember when foodgrain was shipped to India under something called PL 480 which was an American charity exercise called ‘Food for Peace.’ More recently, we saw what happened in Sri Lanka because President Gotabaya Rajapaksa tried to save foreign exchange by restricting the import of fertiliser. Sri Lanka ran out of food and Rajapaksa lost his job when people took to the streets in protest.
What depressed me about the Prime Minister’s austerity appeal is that it brought back memories of those dismal and bleak ‘socialist’ secular decades when everything was in short supply. Foreign travel was impossible because India did not have enough foreign exchange to allow its citizens to waste it on having fun in foreign countries. I remember that the first time I travelled abroad I was allowed barely enough foreign exchange to pay for a taxi from the airport into the city of London. Modi’s appeal sounds like he is warning us all that his promise of ‘acche din’ is now in temporary abeyance.
The other thing that worries me is that his appeal is inevitably going to lead to tokenism on the part of our duplicitous political leaders. After the Prime Minister cut the size of his own cavalcade, there were silly attempts by some to travel pillion on mopeds and to try to fool us into believing that for ‘patriotic’ reasons they were going to sacrifice their lavish and luxurious lifestyle for something humbler. We all know how soon they will go back to their old ways. We also know that those political leaders and bureaucrats whose children study in foreign universities, and there are far too many, will surely travel to spend summer holidays with their privileged progeny.
So here is a suggestion, dear Prime Minister. Instead of appealing to us ‘patriotic’ Indians to tighten our belts by forgoing our tiny comforts, would it not save much, much more money for you and all BJP chief ministers to cut government spending on itself? The man who writes the column next door to this one told me once, when he was Finance Minister, that at least a quarter of the items on the agenda of the Government of India could be cut without anyone noticing. At least half of our government departments could also be cut and the officials who man them can be employed more productively.
There are other things that government can and must do in these austere times. The Defence and Railway ministries have on their hands vast tracts of land that is just sitting idle and this often gets occupied by squatters and slumlords. Why can this not be used for commercial purposes and for building the affordable rental housing that our cities so desperately need? This time of war and tribulation can be turned into a time of real change for the way in which India is governed. Instead of cutting down on small things, could it not be time for us to start cutting down on the big things? It will help hugely to make us ‘viksit’ on target.
