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Since the motorcycle market seems to have dozed off, I've been thrust with some free time on my hands. And as you know, an idle mind is the devil's workshop. So I've actually gotten about to thinking.
Now, the budget is the latest thing that's fashionable to talk about at parties and other such social do's. I don't know how much of an expert I am, for that matter, anybody who talks about it is, but all I know is that it vaguely makes sense to me - basically, I'm done for.
Take for example that mention of CKD's costing more. I mean, sure, I couldn't afford any of those lust-worthy motorcycles and cars any way, but now, they're even more unaffordable - too bloody expensive to even dream about. So there goes my plan of eventually having that Harley in my garage and I'll have to buy a re-stickered 100cc instead. Wow, I'm thrilled to bits!
The government is for the people and by the people, or so some brilliantly popular man once said. Ha! Boy, was he wrong. I went to the RTO to get the mandatory Fitness Certificate done for my bike, and I was told I need to pay 2.5 grand for a new tax - green tax. Yeah, so I shell out that large clump of green bucks for trees chopped for 'developmental work', gutted mangroves and slums with 24x7 supply of electricity and water bang in centre of the crucial Sanjay Gandhi National Park. Yeah, some green tax, that.
Or the road tax that we pay for. Roads? What roads? What we get in return are paths that would be hard pressed even for goat tracks. Paver blocks on busy intersections that last for a few hours. Missing manholes make the commute more thrilling and potholes are so deep that they actually send companies down to explore for oil. Or that latest killer concoction of asphalt they've been laying of late. It lasts forever but during the monsoons, the surface turns into glass.
Yeah, but who cares, if someone skids and dies. Who cares if potholes claim lives and break vehicles. Who cares if every penny of the taxpayers goes to finance lavish weddings and oppulent farmhouses of our leaders. Sigh. Nobody, it seems. Sigh.
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