Excuse me, but why doesn’t the Modi government have money?

In the movie Schindler’s List, Oskar Schindler, the clever, supposedly unfeeling businessman who bordered on the crook, breaks down, distraught that he hadn’t done enough to save more lives. “If only I had made more money…I could have got more out.” He had some more assets he could have sold to buy off the lives of a few more Jews from the Nazis, he cries. “This car, I could have sold this car. Ten people right there…10 more people…this pen…it’s gold…I could have saved one more person…I didn’t do enough!”

This, after he had saved some 1,100 Jews from the Nazi concentration camp at Krakow by hiring them for his factory that made munitions for the Nazi military.

The scene kept coming back to me over the last few days as the Modi government pleaded in court that it need not pay ex gratia to the families of those who died of Covid-19 because the pandemic is not a “one-time event” but a continuing one, that it does not have the money to pay ex gratia to four lakh families, that it can spend the little money it has more usefully on building health infrastructure, even that the “shall” in Section 12 of the Disaster Management Act actually means “may” and the government is not bound to pay ex gratia!

For the Modi government, the law is binding on the people (and meant to harass dissenters), but for itself, it is optional.

One wonders why the Modi government does not have money to pay ex gratia. After all, even if it were to pay Rs 4 lakh – as the court petition sought, in line with a 2015 government notification -- to the kin of each of the roughly four lakh people who have died of Covid so far (officially recognised figure, we all know the true number is far higher), it would amount to just Rs 16,000 crore.

Nitish Kumar has announced Rs 4 lakh ex gratia in Bihar; Shivraj Singh Chauhan in Madhya Pradesh and Yediyurappa in Karnataka have announced Rs 1 lakh; and Arvind Kejriwal in Delhi has announced Rs 50,000 ex gratia for Covid deaths. Why, even the private Azim Premji Foundation, which runs on the large-heartedness of just one man, has earmarked Rs 2,125 crore for Covid response and relief activities.

Only the government of Narendra Modi, who has more or less monopolised almost all sources of revenue and funds – known and secret -- to the central government (taxes, cesses, etc), to the PMO (PM Cares Fund, which is a government fund run by the PMO for collecting money, but a private trust if anybody seeks information about it!), and to the BJP’s own kitty (Electoral Bonds, Electoral Trusts), has no money to give relief to families who have lost a dear one, a bread-winner.

After all, how much more is Rs 16,000 crore compared to the Rs 6,000 crore-plus that the BJP has collected from unknown sources through Electoral Bonds?

Consider this: Every day, the Centre collects about Rs 1,000 crore in taxes on petrol and diesel. About Rs 3.6 lakh crore a year. And it has been squeezing you and me of this order of money for seven years, keeping fuel prices inordinately high. Yet it has no money to pay relief to some unfortunate families.

Also read: 30% rise in mortality seen in second Covid-19 wave, says ICMR

The BJP’s sycophants claim that Modi is doing so to pay for debts the UPA government left behind. Turns out it’s a half-truth, as usual. The oil bonds debt amounts to Rs 1.4 lakh crore in total, amortised over several years. Yearly payments range from about Rs 10,000-22,000 crore between October this year and March 2026. So, the government is citing an annual liability of Rs 10,000-20,000 crore to justify keeping fuel prices sky high and collecting Rs 3.6 lakh crore from you and me every year! Yet, it has no money to show compassion to unfortunate families.

The sycophants will then tell you that the fuel taxes are being used to fund schemes for the poor. Yes, that’s right. The money that’s being squeezed out of you and me is paying for the nation’s food, fertiliser and fuel (LPG/kerosene) subsidies, and then some. Previous governments ran the subsidy schemes without taxing us daily for them. And that begs the question: Why is this so under the Modi government? Weren’t we all told repeatedly that India had become an economic superpower under Modi and so the government had greater resources? Didn’t India’s GDP grow and grow under Modi as often proclaimed? Didn’t demonetisation bring all the black money out and fill up the government’s coffers with higher tax revenues as claimed? Then why doesn’t the government have money?

Wouldn’t it be so much simpler and honest for Modi to just come up on TV and tell the nation that he totally screwed up the economy with his whims and fancies, especially since November 8, 2016, and he’s sorry for that. But, of course, you have to have a large heart to be able to say sorry, to be able to show compassion. And if you do have a large heart, as claimed, you don’t wait for the Supreme Court to tell you what you need to do. You would think and do as Schindler did.