Charity begins at home

Manmohan Singh’s recent appeal for austerity may have led to several ministers canceling their summer vacations, but ironically enough it’s Mr Singh’s travel bills that has left the taxpayer reeling the most. If you think that the PM’s establishment is large enough to justify a larger expense than that of other cabinet ministers (even if their expenses were put together) then you’re most probably right but chew on this : in the last decade, about Rs 371 crores were spent in chartering planes alone for the PM’s foreign trips. Rs 120 crores of that amount was spent ferrying Mr Singh around in 2005 and 2006. That’s one third of what was spent in the last 10 years. I don’t know about the voters but it may have surely left some ministers with canceled holidays pissed off.