The Power of ONE...

When I was in school, my dad used to say “beta man lagakar padho, bas “ek” sal ki baat aur hai...phir to aish hain...zindagi ban jayegi” And the dialogue remained unchanged for the forthcoming years of my life. Be it the 12th class or the final year of engineering or the year after that to get into MBA or the final year at MBA or the first year at job. And I am still wondering that when will that “ONE” year end...feels like never...

India is predominantly a savings oriented country where even ONE Rupee was considered valuable by our forefathers, which is really the case...given the time value of money :) (1 Rupee of their time is valued much more than 1 Rupee of today). In today's era of 99 or 999 or 9999 and likewise, you offer the shopkeeper a 100 rupee note or 1000 rupee note and neither the shopkeeper returns the change nor are you expected to ask for it (or else you'll get a stern look). So has this one rupee lost its importance???

I don’t know because sometime back this happened...

Few days back, the toll charges on Gurgaon Expressway were increased from Rs. 20 to Rs. 21. A mere one rupee hike isn’t it. But this caused a colossal amount of problems to the travelers across the city. Traffic jams during the non peak hours were to the tune of 3-4 kms on either side of toll which amplified to as choked as 7-8 kms during peak hours. Here the same one rupee was responsible for people sweating in the traffic jam costing them 4-5 hours of their precious time and making them say some “serene” words to government and other fellow people. (No prizes to be won on guessing some of those “serene” words)

And then we had some very poor people……

Mr. Kalmadi, after the allegations of hefty bribes, said that he was deeply pained and constrained at the malicious campaign against him and the stories going around are far from facts. He promised that he would resign if proven guilty of taking “ONE” Rupee as bribe. Someone please explain Mr. Kalmadi that no one can prove that you took one rupee. Because you took much much much much more than that and the amount was so staggeringly huge that 1500 people (different assumptions can add to different number of zeroes) can survive their lives on that amount.

On one hand we have poor and deprived people like Mr. Kalmadi or Mr. Raja for that matter and on the other hand we had some prime ministers like Morarji Desai and Lal Bahadur Shastri, who used to draw minimal amount of salaries, sufficient enough to keep their and their families’ stomachs filled.

With changed times, seven digit salaries, major increase in purchasing power, changed spending patterns, innumerable options to spend, Rs. 1 or rather even Rs. 100 also has actually lost too much significance (my grandmother till date cannot digest that paani puri is now for Rs. 30 for five pieces, in their times it was Rs. 1 for 100 pieces). However, even now, crucial events like the toll hike comes up and I am compelled to mull over the advice of my progenitors about the power of 1...the mulling over doesn’t even end and we have our honorable Prime Minister Mr. Manmohan Singh skipping the voting in his constituency; and the congress spokesperson defends the same simply by saying...“How does ONE vote matter”????? Does it really???????