This morning, I wrote a satirical defence of NRN’s tone-deaf utterance about subsidy. Sure enough, the apparently educated and obviously privileged were up in arms about it. This is my rebuttal.
Assertion
Infosys has given back through increased taxes, employment, consumption, and general raising of quality of life of millions for all that its founders have taken in terms of subsidies, tax breaks, and other advantages of a social welfare state, which in many ways, India is and strives to be. What the founder is saying that people should ideally pay back (which means they aren’t doing so right now) what the nation spends on them. That otherwise, it would just be free stuff. And he is opposed to giving anything to anyone for free. This seems like a reasonable position.
My reply
The ‘free’ things NRN talks about will also be paid several hundred times over by educated and empowered people, especially the downtrodden and minorities. And not just for one generation but forever. A Dalit girl who uses the subsidies and affirmative action that enables her to learn and get employment in an inherently unequal world where she is handicapped purely by her birth and gender, will add far more to this nation and its wealth for far longer than NRN can ever imagine.
So, what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, right? No one is grudging the subsidies or breaks NRN got. If that is the message you are taking from this, let me assure you that you are wrong. What people like us are disgusted by is his denial of it to others. You do not kick the ladder that you used to climb up. And you cannot say that people who object to your kicking that ladder are actually anti-ladder!
And by the way, your assertion that somehow the poor, oppressed, needy, and downtrodden getting aid from their own government is less ‘beneficial’ to the society and is an expense versus the ‘investment’ made by the nation into an Infosys, you have other problems. You need empathy, not economics. Also, you need to learn how societies function, how democracy works, how civilisation has advanced over history, and so many things that to educate you, I’d have to quit everything and spend the next 3 years teaching you stuff your parents and your school should ideally have taught you. So, thanks. But no, thanks.
To put it in Marathi, नारायणा, तू काय इन्फोसिस मध्ये लोकांना नोकरीला ठेवून उपकार केलेस काय रे, भो?
