Fiddle while Rome burns

Kingfisher Airlines has just released its annual report 2011-12 or, as they call it in-house, the best tragedy novel ever written. Amidst reports of losses never before seen since A Raja decided to violate the Indian economy, one item stood out. The CEO¡¯s salary increased by nearly 100%, from 2 crores to 4 crores.

I am very impressed with this sound business decision. Here is an company whose balance sheet makes that of the beggar on my road look green, rewarding the guy at the helm of everything for his sound leadership. I think this sends exactly the right message, and I wish that some other entities would also follow Kingfisher¡¯s example, and reward the wrong people out of proportion. In fact, here are a few ideas:

1. Kasab: should not be executed, no. He should get an AK-47 with unlimited ammo (like in the videogames) and a government limousine to ferry him to all the most populated regions of India. After his second slaughter, he should be returned home to Pakistan as a hero. And given props for his high score.

2. The New Zealand Cricket Team: should be immediately given the #1 position in both Test and ODI (and T20) rankings, seeing as how they have performed so well in the past few years. Either them or Kenya - but even Kenya haven¡¯t lost to the West Indies recently. In fact, Team NZ should be declared the best team in any sport ever, and all the members should be summarily knighted.

3. Our politicians: should get a yearly bonus. Time and again, we have heard that there are no incentives in their occupation, so we must start giving them a performance based increment. This will be an innovative one; it will be a percentage of how much they cost the economy in the previous year. With this in place, they will finally be able to justify corruption, instead of acting like they don¡¯t approve of it.

4. Sagarika Ghose: should be allowed to speak up more. During a one hour show, she often lets her guests speak for as much as 30 seconds of the show. This is not acceptable; we need to hear her voice more so that we can come to like it as much as she does. What we need to do is obvious: pass a law that no one can ever speak while she is speaking, on pain of death. Those of us not in the same room as her will never know if she is speaking or not, so none of us will ever be able to speak again, and we will become an MMS nation. Like PM, like people.

5. All TV channels: should get permission to show only advertisements, instead of regular programming. They anyway only use the shows that they have to air as excuses to take breaks every 4 minutes and show us 3 minutes of ads. If they cut out the unnecessary non-ad content, we will never have to hear ¡®Don¡¯t go away¡¯ and ¡®Break ke baad; ever again. We all win.

6. Permanently invisible people on Google Chat: should be conferred real invisibility, so that no one can ever see or hear them again. This will satisfy their need for anonymity, and quiet stalking of red/green/yellow people on their chat list.