It was sad to see the innumerable ads given out on Rajiv Gandhi’s birthday by the various government ministries and departments in the newspapers. As counted, the Times of India, Delhi edition carried a total of 16 advertisements related to Rajiv Gandhi – 11 half-page, 4 full-page and 1 quarter-page. That’s “gyaaraah-char”, or in other terms “atyaachaar” over the Indian common man – precious public money is being wasted on such monickers without any accountability.

The usual political practice of keeping the inauguration of key projects on hold for such special occasions is also deplorable. Politicians play up this card time and again and use this ploy to get attention of the powers. And the common man suffers at the hands of these shenanigans…

It should be incumbent on the government to discourage such spending. Only if we could have had a single 1-page ad in the newspaper from the Government of India, it would have been sufficient to show the government’s respect towards the leader. But alas. Even newspapers like TOI don’t have a check on such wasteful expenditure by the government and discourage it. In fact they would love to profit from so many ads, which although is good from the business sense of it, can be highly questioned from the ethical point of view of the greater society which the newspaper serves.

Most of us indeed respect Rajiv Gandhi and what he did for India as a national leader. However, I deem true respect to him would be paid not by squandering public money in such useless ways but by ensuring that the intended recipients get not the proverbial 15 paise from a rupee but the full value. Then only would we be able to proclaim ourselves as having followed his espoused principles…