It's the money, honey

Of the millions of words being said and written in the mass media following the Maoist-organized massacre of CRPF policemen in Dantewada, Chattisgarh, this particular news item caught my attention. Look at the last paragraph. It seems that the families of the jawans who were killed will receive a total of Rs. 38 lakhs (3.8 million) each as compensation, besides one job per family on humanitarian grounds.

Now I have no intention of belittling or insulting the soldiers who die fighting for the government (notice I didn’t say ‘for their country’, though), but a few reflections are in order:

1. A lot of people work in very harsh conditions ‘for their country’ (postmen and firemen and ordinary policemen and teachers in private schools – who are usually paid much less than their government counterparts – and coolies at construction sites, to name just a few), and cannot expect even a tiny fraction of that kind of reward whether they die at work or live beyond normal retirement age;

2. Given that these policemen come from humble or even poor backgrounds, the compensation is truly princely – now I know why there’s never a dearth of people eager to sign on, despite the risks;

3. Since these people know they can look forward to that kind of reward for their families in case they are killed on duty, don’t expressions like ‘they made the supreme sacrifice for their country’ sound a little hollow, not to say pretentious?

4. Make a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation. The government doles out several tens of crores in such compensation to the families of dead soldiers/policemen every year. Mightn’t it have been a better idea to spend that money on the kind of genuine and much needed development of those most backward regions of this country where mass discontent is the breeding ground of militant rebellion?

5. A few years ago the father of a pupil of mine, a civil engineer working for the army’s Border Roads Organization, had volunteered to work on a highway construction project in Afghanistan, despite the huge risk from resurgent terrorists there, because, he said, the pay was really good. Since these people love money more than their lives (remember, the man was, if not rich, quite comfortably off here, and nobody had forced him to go), do we really need to shed copious collective tears over them when they are picked off by terrorists or brigands? Why do we want to have our cake and eat it too?

6. I have been a teacher all my life. For the last eight years I have been entirely self-employed. The government happily takes income tax from me every year, but promises my family no reward, no compensation of any kind should I die early. A beautician charges ten times what I do for a tenth of the kind of work I do, whether you count mental skills or physical exertion (of late my doctor has been urging me to take it easy). Everybody in this country pretends to ‘honour’ teachers and the work they do. Yet there are so many people who say behind our backs that we teachers have become 'greedy'. Whereas Shah Rukh Khan is not, and Sachin is the pride of India, and fashion models 'deserve' to be paid little fortunes for posing in underwear, and soldiers make ‘supreme sacrifices’ killing their own countrymen. (Just to silence armchair cynics, I'd be glad to 'die for my country' anytime provided I knew that my family would be comfortably off as a result for the rest of their lives. And I wouldn't care whether people called it 'the supreme sacrifice' or not.)

Any comments?