tamilweek.com

Middle Class Misery

by R. A. Ratwatte
[Kandy]

Seated at the dinner table last night with my family under a single florescent bulb with the lights in the rest of the house turned off (as the electricity bill is unbearable), I looked at my two boys and baby girl and their plates that contained sausages (not nourishing but affordable), lots of vegetables (only the kind that grows in the garden), and thought of the fact that dessert would be out of the question, and wondered what my father would have said. We never ate this frugally when he “brought home the bacon” and currently I earn a whole lot more than he ever did!

Just look at the plight of the middle class of this country. I dare not use the word ‘upper’ to specify the middle class I am talking about because that would be politically incorrect wouldn’t it? We who pay taxes, live off a salary or two if the spouse works as well, who have no one abroad to send in remittances that cushion the inflation; we who under saner economic regimes were allowed tax relief on our loan interest, interest that was around 17% which is now 24%; we who had acknowledgement from the government for being the engine of growth of the economy; we are languishing now! Completely ignored and being squeezed dry by punitive taxes, interest rates and salaries that can in no way match the spiralling inflation.

What are we going to do? Farmers I am told, resort to partaking of the pesticides that they use in their fields. Can we swallow our computers or mobile phones? I doubt if the necessary effect would take place!

The facts are that spiralling prices are due to effects of the world economy and the price of oil. Any government that was in power would have had to face these facts. However, this is not something that happened “out of the blue.” This was predicted and anticipated. If not for “cheap politics” that used a screwed up nationalistic line to gain power on the premise of fighting a war, the taxes need not have been so high. If not for the need to have a huge cabinet of ministers and pay all their expenses the interest rates need not have been so high as the anomalies in the money supply would have been controlled.

EVERYTHING is being done in the name of this war that is going to unite the country. Any unity will only be geographical because we are alienating our Tamil brethren and creating more and more potential Tamil tigers with every abduction and every assassination. Not to speak of every funeral at which a bereft little girl is shown in the national newspapers crying her heart out for a father who is lost forever.

The naivety of a bunch of monks who have no right to wear the sacred “Chivaraya” and conduct themselves in violation of the “Vinaya” have been exposed to the maximum. It is not their fault. Their fragile egos have been pandered to by opportunistic businessmen and bankrupt environmentalists and they are being used as a front to deal in Benz cars and power.

The JVP is also out there on view. The sight of the “king with the invisible robes” is nauseating to say the least. They have no leg to stand on (let alone a robe to cover their nakedness), but they continue to make what they think are clever speeches in parliament and allow empty rhetoric to reign supreme.

Meanwhile, the bombs have started again. When the children go to school in the morning, one doesn’t know if they will come back alive. Here again it is only our children, not those of the people who are responsible for this situation who are in danger. Every journey has the potential of ending in disaster and all it would take would be to be at the wrong place at the wrong time! Maybe we should take the fatalistic line and say that when our time is up, it will be up. No sir, all we ask is for the same chance to extend our “time” that a politician and his children have!

It really wasn’t us who voted for this. The metropolitan and urban vote (of those who were allowed to vote), went against this war. It was the people in Moneragala, the NCP, Sabaragamuwa and Wayamba who wanted this war. Who is affected the most on a daily basis is US dear “middle classer” and what can we do about it?

Nothing much after all. This is a democracy isn’t it? And some part of a majority must have asked for this.

Be labelled as a TRAITOR by showing your dissent or pack your bags and get the hell out of this paradise that seems to have been lost forever, if you can! [a letter to the editor, published in island.lk]