The kids in UP now have free laptops fully loaded with photos of Neta ji, CM sahib and something about fulfilled promises.
That’s the beauty of socialism. Sponsoring something with your own money to get your branding and faces on it is so Coke and Pepsi.
Fuckin’ market oriented capitalism. Bazarwaad!
In Samajwad, spending public money to further your brand is kosher. Social change!
Talk about social change? The digital divide is now bridged.
The glowing white light of knowledge has reached the villages with no electricity, proper roads and primary schools.
The sons and daughters of poor farmers will now crack IIT JEE, PMT and CAT. Fuck you city bred, English speaking urban elites.
Will the quality of teachers in primary schools improve? Will they come to school daily instead of calling the attendance register home? Will they teach instead of asking kids to go get some gutkha?
Damn the cynic in me. The laptops are going to put the bloody world on their fingertips. Who needs primary school Science, Math and English teachers?
What about jobs? What will the kids do when they grow up? There can be no industry because roads and electricity sucks. There can be no industrialists because who would want their kids kidnapped. Police and teacher recruitment in UP have always been a money fest. What will these laptop wielding kids do?
Job? Is being a party voter not a job?
I mean, some of them would become full time party workers all with beacons and hooters and tinted glasses and colorful stickers and flags on white Scorpios. Isn’t that upward social mobility?
Hmmm. How about using these 3000 Crores to build roads, better hospitals, better schools? How about providing primary health, education and improving law and order?
Come to think of it, not doing that is actually smarter. Two reasons:
a) Building roads, hospitals, schools and providing electricity, doctors, teachers are infinitely more complex than distributing laptops. More hands means more mouths means more public money disappearing on the way. It’s a brilliant move to curb corruption. Anna should be happy.
b) At least some of them will be grateful enough to remember the freebie when they go to vote.
By now, I am almost convinced of the tremendous social upliftment just waiting to be unleashed by the free laptop scheme. Only a small doubt remains.
Loan waiver schemes of the eighties/nineties led to a slew of loan waiver schemes. They provided instant relief to farmers but did nothing to remove the reasons behind rural indebtedness. Within a couple of years, the same guy came under the same debt once again.
Why not spend the money to create assets which create education, health and job opportunities so that they can buy their own laptops?
Ooops! My bad! Dumb dork me!
The above reasons a) and b) will hold for this too.
Empowering them to buy their own laptops is complex, will lead to corruption and won’t generate gratitude.
Point taken.
Hold on! This gratitude thingie?
Isn’t it the same as bribing voters? Significantly evolved, alright, but isn’t it the same as offering pauwa to the voters and counting on their quid-pro-quo.
Tum mujhe vote do, main tumhe pauwa, err, laptop dunga!
Heck, the pauwa is at least given from the election candidate’s own pocket (compensation from public funds follows and that too only if the guy wins)
Well, if your glasses are so bloody dark, even gangajal will look like pauwa to you. Why? Going by this logic, wouldn’t doing anything amount to bribing the voters?
Tum mujhe vote do, main tumhe roads dunga, bijli dunga, school dunga, hospital dunga, job dunga….
Fair enough. I rest my case. All hail social change.
Hey wait a sec! How will a guy in a village which doesn’t see power for days charge the laptop?
Dude, communism died decades ago. State largesse is a fossil. You can’t expect government to provide everything for you. Why, can’t you even arrange for electricity yourself? Fuckin’ beggars. Give them a finger and they’ll ask for the entire arm.
Grow some balls. Get some self respect. Do something on your own you khairati hospital!
Agreed. Convinced. Surrendered.
Free laptop scheme is the iPod of social welfare schemes.
If only UP were not so poor or the central government not anti-UP, it could have been even better – free IIPM degrees for all kids in UP.
Just then, Kero Mama walks in smiling ear to ear with an evil glint in his eyes – It’s the look of a twelve year old who has just been tapped on the head by the hot neighborhood aunty. Or the look on your face the day you score higher than the topper of your class in moral science.
“Some smartass kids are already selling these laptops for 10,000”.
Trust the market forces to determine the true value of anything, I want to remember my MBA Fin prof but regain my senses quickly. Thank god for that.
Market sucks. Bazarwaad sucks.
All hail social change. Free style. Fully let loose.
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