6 min readApr 5, 2026 06:47 AM IST First published on: Apr 5, 2026 at 06:47 AM ISTThese are difficult days and judging by President Trump’s speech last week, there are many more difficult days ahead. Learned economists are warning of a world recession. Every country is adrift without a paddle in a dark, stormy ocean. This is why it worries me that our Prime Minister seems to be doing no more than attend meetings between campaigning for the coming state elections. He is aware that things could get worse before they get better and has tried to warn people of this, but what puzzles me is why he is not doing more. Why, for instance, is he not using this scarily alarming crisis to order his government to reduce spending on itself?Let me recount two anecdotes to illustrate what I mean by this. Last week I was in a car in Delhi when sirens started to blare from behind us. Having once had the terrifying experience of taking a seriously ill person to hospital in an ambulance that remained unnervingly stuck in traffic, I asked my driver to let the ambulance pass. He said, ‘It isn’t an ambulance…it is some minister’s convoy.’ By then the noise of sirens had gotten so shrill that other cars had all moved aside to let the cavalcade pass. I counted seven to ten cars. Why does a minister, even an important cabinet minister, need to use so many cars during a severe fuel crisis?AdvertisementThe second anecdote comes from a friend’s daughter’s wedding. It was a glamorous, glitzy event attended by many high officials and grandees. As I was leaving this wedding party, I noticed the son of a cabinet minister emerging from a cluster of expensive cars. With the Strait of Hormuz still almost closed, is it right for the spoilt progeny of our political leaders to be travelling in ministerial cavalcades? Is it not time for the Prime Minister to put his foot down?It has been my dubious privilege to cover politics and governance in Delhi for nearly half a century and witnessing how ‘security’ became an excuse for ministers to measure their pomp by the number of cars filled with security men that they can commandeer. When they arrive at five-star hotels, these ministers preen and pirouette their way into the lobby making sure that everyone notices how big their cavalcade is. I also remember those days when Jawaharlal Nehru travelled through the streets of Delhi in a single shabby ambassador car. It is true that there are now serious threats to some ministers but why is it not possible for them to travel in one car with their security men seated in it with them?This column has crusaded passionately over the years for kicking our politicians and bureaucrats out of the Lutyens bungalows they occupy at enormous cost to taxpayers. Reliable estimates reveal that we spend more than Rs 50 crore just on housing. If you add the free electricity, telephones, servants, gardeners and maintenance that we pay for, the cost would be more than Rs 100 crore a year. We are, as I have pointed out before in this space, the only democratic country that provides official housing to the ‘servants of the people.’ May I suggest that their salaries be increased and that they be given an allowance for rent. And that the Government of India start making commercial use of Lutyens Delhi. A single house sells for between Rs 150 and 200 crore. There are plenty of rich Indians who would happily buy property in this most exclusive enclave.AdvertisementOn the war I shall say only that it infuriated me to hear Donald Trump say in his speech last week that he was ready to bomb ‘Iran into the stone age where it belongs’. To say this about a country that has a civilisation that goes back 7000 years shows not just deplorable ignorance but conceit of the worst kind. Having said this, may I add that the Ayatollahs and their cohorts did a great deal to trample on the civilisation of ancient Persia and impose Islam in its ugliest form.you may likeWhen I hear Indian Muslims rant and rave against Donald Trump for harming a country that was civilised thousands of years before civilisation came to Europe, it makes me angry because I wish they had noticed the harm done by the Ayatollahs to ancient Persia’s magnificent civilisation.These are things to discuss later. Today we in India need to demand that our political leaders do more to tighten their belts. If the world economy falls into recession, then India will be more affected than most countries because of the fragility of our economy and because we have not done as much as China for energy security. China has enough green energy to keep around 20 per cent of its economy running at the worst of times. If we had built huge resources of wind and solar power, we would be in a happier position.But there is nothing like a crisis to jolt our political leaders into action and when the Prime Minister next convenes a meeting with chief ministers, we must hope that he urges them to find greener fuels to run state economies. He himself needs to ensure that his ministers no longer travel in cavalcades they do not need. Or live like princes in palatial bungalows that cost much more than taxpayers should pay for their ‘servants’.