A common refrain when people express any desire to leave this country for greener and cleaner pastures is but you’ll always be a second class citizen in the US or Europe or Japan etc.

But being a citizen under a government that promotes quackery and poor policy like bulldozer justice, demonetisation, e20 fuel, Sanskrit, ayurveda, yoga and wastes hard earned tax money on building boondoggles like oversized statues and temples, one has to wonder is being an outsider with quality governance not a better fate than being a son of the soil who is constantly having sand rubbed in their eyes? Let’s forget all the other indignities of being a citizen like the corruption, littering etc.

A tax by any other name

The E20 thing is not about fuel efficiency, better acceleration and less pollution.

It’s a plain and simple way to tax us and hand over the difference to farmers.

This would be a reasonable deal if it didn’t result in the degradation of our personal property and some of the farmers happen to be the guys who decide to taint our fuel. And there is no choice. They are arguing we will destroy your property slowly and surely and you have no choice in this matter.  That’s the definition of tyranny.

There are farmers in this country and there are ‘farmers’. The former are under compensated and overworked chaps growing what you eat for lunch. The latter are eating you for lunch.

When a government is incapable of transparency or clear governance, what can one do? You can’t figure out how to rationalise land ownership or incentivise farmers for growing actual food, you
resort to intellectualy dishonest policy that robs one portion of the population to enrich others. Worse yet, they seek to profit off your misery with every possible policy choice. And to add salt to your wounds pretend like they are doing you a favour.

So you can be a second class citizen while living at home. In fact, most of us are second class citizens in this country. Just because you can afford a few nicer trinkets, insulate yourself from the general environment, eat a nice meal made by mom, run into your uncle on the next road or get a drink with your school buddies on a whim your life does not become ‘first’ class. And it does not make you a first class citizen.

Being seen as an outsider is a small but reasonable price to pay for honest and good governance.