What we can learn from Mr A and Mr B

The richest man in the world Mr B just had his ldquobest day everrdquo Jeff Bezos the owner of Amazon travelled 60 miles up in a spaceship to outer space From takeoff to touchdown the journey lasted a mere 11 minutes of which four were outside the earthrsquos gravitational field hence weightlessHow much would you pay to be weightless for four minutes Bezos spent around USD 55 billion to launch himself into space Thatrsquos a lot of changemdashUSD 5500000000How much money do you suppose Mr Bezos makes in 11 minutesBusiness Insider estimated that he takes in USD 8961187 per hour While he floated in the zero gravity of outer space he raked in roughly USD 16 millionI think of Bezos as an unimpressive vulgarly rich American He overworks his employees underpays them and doesnrsquot always pay his taxes One of those workers earning the minimum wage of USD 15 an hour would have to work 24 hours a day for 68 years to earn what Bezos makes in one hourNearer home we have our Mr A Mukesh Ambani another person of no great intellectual or moral weight but just as vulgarly rich According to an Oxfam report he earned R90 crore an hour during the pandemic Roughly 24 per cent of Indians earned R125 an hour during the pandemicMr A is even more egregious than Mr B In the thick of a vicious disease where people were cremating loved ones in car parks Mr A earned 72000000 times more in an hour than the average suffering Indian No matter how shrewd a businessman Mr A is there is something crass about one man earning so much when so many are groveling in miseryThe obscenity of the personal lifestyles of Mr A and Mr B made me think deep and hard about the things wersquove been told to accept as normalmdashbut shouldnrsquotSomething is very wrong with our livesIt shouldnrsquot be acceptable that rich people get richer while the poor get poorer During the pandemic worldwide people lost USD 37 trillion in income The worldrsquos billionaires gained USD 39 trillion in the same period A mere 0002 per cent of the worldrsquos populationmdashindividuals worth more than USD 330 million eachmdashhold 62 per cent of the worldrsquos wealthItrsquos time you stopped believing the Tony Robbins and Napoleon Hills who preach that one day you too could rise out of middleclass drudgery and be like Mr A or Mr B They tell you that visualising wealth creates wealth that positive thinking attracts positive events and that itrsquos all in your hands Itrsquos utterly untrue but thoughts like this keep you docile uncritical and uncomplaining blaming yourself when things go wrongThe truthmdashMr A lives in a 27storey building precisely because you never will No matter how many selfhelp books you swallow whole you will never own a golf course a Learjet and a swimming pool Call the bluff nowAdmit that therersquos something disturbingly odd about a system that lets you choose only once every five years between two individualsmdashand calls that democracy Whoever wins you are deemed to have presumptively consented to whatever he will do for the next five years You voted for a person and inherited a platform full of details no one ever shared with you He decides where your shoe pinches and whether you should live with the pinch Protest and you are subversive unpatriotic or antinationalFor rape to be taken as a serious crime thousands have to march for weeks For farmers to feel the leaders have their interests at heart they must block national highways with their tractors on the highway for monthsYou soon realise that the person you chose is not your servant he is your overlordI have a theory I believe human beings have rather simple needsmdashkindness cooperation empathy altruism civility and decency A government that cannot deliver those has failed profoundly no matter how well it manages the interest the GDP and Foreign Direct Investment Our lives are not transactions we survive by holding handsFor 15 years from 1989 in Puerto Ricorsquos Porto Allegro the citizens did the planning and the government merely implemented Every single metric of a better life from child mortality to sanitation and primary education improvedIceland is blazing a thrilling trail in bottomup leadership In the Better Reykjavik programme twothirds of the cityrsquos citizens worked together to develop a city improvement plan voted on it and took the final proposal to the council for them to implement It was not a petition it was a briefIf the councillor didnrsquot accept the plan he had to give sound reasoned arguments whyThe government was the employee The people were the bossHere viewed from there C Y Gopinath in Bangkok throws unique light and shadows on Mumbai the city that raised him You can reach him at cygopigmailcomSend your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper