Salaries to Imams, Mahants, Priests, Granthies etc.

Salaries to Imams, Mahants, Priests, Granthies etc.

It is very surprising that there are numerous government employees or otherwise who are working for the people whom we are not able to pay and we are talking of paying the religious preachers. We are generally orthodox people who generously donate at the places of worship. Most of these places are worth crores and crores of rupees with an almost similar holding of precious metal.

One is baffled at the approach of these politicians that it is painful that we have such elected members who are there to grab the assets of the state for themselves, their kith and kin, or doll out for others to meet their aim of gathering votes.

Why no politician pays the salary to the priests of their faith when their own holdings are huge. The people have not forgotten the fodder scam ”more than 1000 crores, the telephone scam “in which Rs 1,500 crore was allegedly pocketed by politicians and bureaucrats—and from whose houses in New Delhi and Mandi the CBI recovered Rs 3.67 crore in hard cash.”, another Politician from UP making memorials worth hundreds of crores of public money, another one spending crores and crores of rupees on birthday bash up, etc. The list of such lavish expenditure, hoarding, scams, misuse etc is unending.

The politicians must keep in mind that they have been entrusted the responsibility of looking after the interest of the people and not work against it. The following from the life of Socrates
“Socrates realized that the Oracle was correct, in that while so-called wise men thought themselves wise and yet were not, he himself knew he was not wise at all, which, paradoxically, made him the wiser one since he was the only person aware of his own ignorance. Socrates' paradoxical wisdom made the prominent Athenians he publicly questioned look foolish, turning them against him and leading to accusations of wrongdoing. Socrates defended his role as a gadfly until the end: at his trial, when Socrates was asked to propose his own punishment, he suggests a wage paid by the government and free dinners for the rest of his life instead, to finance the time he spends as Athens' benefactor. He was, nevertheless, found guilty of corrupting the minds of the youth of Athens and sentenced to death by drinking a mixture containing poison hemlock. According to Xenophon's story, Socrates purposefully gave a defiant defense to the jury because "he believed he would be better off dead".
The politicians should act in a sensible manner and ensure that due justice is done to the responsibility they have been entrusted with. The quality of self sacrifice is very important. They should transact business of the house with total focus on the development of the people, the country and ensure that the meager recourses of the country are protected and put to the optimum benefit of the people.