Rs 25 crore: There goes any room for haggling

Oh dear, oh dear. What has Ardhendhu Bhushan Bardhan done! Like the rest of us, the veteran CPI leader also knows that ridiculous sums of money do exchange hands whenever a government has to get people on board to prove something or another. The trust vote scheduled for July 22 is no different in everyone’s mind. It’s sort of seen as one of the Rules of the Game. But Mr Bardhan has zoned into a fixed amount: Rs 25 crore. He insists that this precise figure is the price “the government is paying per MP to stay in power”.

While some nasty souls are muttering ‘sour grapes’ and others wonder how he came to know about the exact figure, no one in their right mind can deny the fact that the Left leaders are not into stuffing their pockets. But by quoting a price Mr Bardhan has unwittingly fixed the rate of ‘MPs for sale’. Which leaves very little room for haggling.

So while the five Jharkhand Mukti Morcha MPs were reportedly settling for Rs 18 crore each, now they’re quoting Mr Bardhan to up their price tag. The Mizo National Front’s single parliamentarian may now be rethinking that the Rs 2 crore he...

Now that MPs will be quoting the ‘Bardhan Price’, I think we can safely assume that inflationary effects have spread far and wide. Can Mr Bardhan now please, please say something about journalists ‘on the take’?