Our Supreme Leader is known for his candid views on matters related to governance. For instance, last week in an interview to international news portal Al Bagheera, he said that 90% of Mangovillains are stupid and hence policies do not bear fruit. He also said that only complaints will not do and citizens need to come up with suggestions. He says ‘Meet me half way’. As a first step, he has decided to open up the books of accounts of the government to the public via the Transparency Portal. Now citizens can see how every single Rupee is being earned or spent, including invoice copies.
Supreme Leader, you want us to come up with solutions, but it is not our job. We pay taxes and expect the government to to use its brains. We have better things to do.
What better things to do? Spend whole day on Twitter and troll people?
There is no evidence to back the claim that people are spending all their time on Twitter. It is government propaganda to discredit the public for having an opinion.
I appointed Professor Ultashastri to do research on how productive our people really are. He started with the hypothesis that majority of Mangovillains are underemployed and overpaid. Results show that his hypothesis was correct.
Bull shit. Please share the methodology with us.
Our sample size consisted of 500 respondents. Of these 25% were Rickshaw drivers, 25% were executives with the job title ‘Manager’, 25% were social media influencers, 20% were spiritual gurus and 5% were e-commerce delivery executives
That does not sound like a representative sample to me. Only 5% from the hardest working lot!
We asked people to volunteer for the survey. We went with whoever responded.
Please enlighten us on what questions you asked to determine if the population is underemployed and overpaid.
Good question. We avoided asking very direct questions because people believe that they are ‘expected’ to respond in a certain manner. Here is the set of ingenious questions that Prof. Ultashastri and yours truly came up with.
Good grief! You might as well have skipped the survey and declared your opinions as fact. Anyway, tell us something about your transparency initiative. What sort of information can the public expect to see in the disclosures?
Very important information, such as total expenditure on samosas in government meetings, the amount of bribe received above the permissible limit etc.
You have a permissible limit for bribes?
Yes. It helps bring down corruption. If restaurants can levy mandatory service charge, why can’t we charge some bribe? Think of it as a tip for work well done. We too are providing services. Our children also need to get an education.
Getting services from the government is our fundamental right. You are not doing anything special.
There is no such fundamental right in the Mangoville Constitution. In any case, we believe in ‘Agile’. The next update is coming soon.
Article 21.8.2 of the Mangoville Constitution says “Every citizen is entitled to decent living conditions and the government shall ensure that such conditions are created using the tax money received”
Exactly! Using the “tax money received”. We don’t receive any. You guys don’t pay.
25% percent of Mangoville pays taxes. The others are too poor.
That’s why we abandon flyover construction after 25% of the work is done.
Article 15.7.4 of the Mangoville Constitution says that the government shall guarantee employment.
That is the article that will be deleted in the next update.
You cannot run the country like a software project!
Don’t fret. We have a better idea than employment generation. It is called Employment Redistribution. Remember all those people who didn’t respond to the survey because they were too busy? We will take half their work and half their salary and give it to unemployed people.
This is ridiculous! You should instead redistribute the undeserved wealth of those who responded!
If I were you, I would be careful. You are on top of that list. Should I share your response sheet in this interview?
Er, let’s continue talking about the transparency portal. What use is it for the public to know how many samosas government officials are eating?
I thought this is the sort of information people wanted to know. Do you think anyone is interested in knowing that we paid Rs 50 lakhs to a shell company owned by Superpower Swamy in Cayman Islands to install 5 toilet seats in the Town Hall that we demolished during the pandemic? That sort of information has always been there in the government portal. Nobody reads it. That portal has had only 25 visits in the last 2 years. Of these 22 were Chinese web crawling bots.
The transparency portal shows that a bullet proof Limousine has been requisitioned by the “Ministry for Catching Tax Evaders Discreetly”. Why does this ministry need such a conspicuous vehicle?
Aunty Opinion, you need to keep up with the times. Businessmen are very smart. They have started identifying plain clothed officials. When we send a Limousine, they think an important investor has arrived and they let their guard down.
I can see that there is an option for the public to reject the requisition. Very nice. I have clicked the ‘Reject’ button.
Thank you. You should have read the disclaimer. It is not even in fine print 🤣
This is trickery. You are taking advantage of the fact that people don’t read anything before clicking
It is not our duty to educate the public that they should read properly before clicking. Speaking of which, we have added some fundamental duties in the Mangoville Constitution. If you want rights, you should perform some duties as well.
I am sure that like your transparency initiative, this is also a joke on the public.
You are too quick to judge the government. I am only asking for our citizens to be a little more empathetic. They only think about themselves.
Excellent. I have an audience question – Rickshaw Rowdy asks if the donation box outside your house is secured with a chain or bolted to a wall.
Rowdy you crook, the money doesn’t remain in the box. Once you deposit money, it goes through a tunnel into a safe vault in a secret chamber in my house. Next question.
Mango Mishra says that if he adds all the samosa bills uploaded in the portal, it amounts to Rs 25 Crores. How is it possible for government departments to consume samosas worth this much in a small country like Mangoville.
Transparency portal is about displaying information. It is not our job to question how many samosas are eaten by which official. In any case if Mishra ji is so jobless that he has the time to download all those bills, he can also carry out an investigation. No more questions now. I have to go home now. My wife says we have received a big donation in the box.
How much donation have you received? The nation wants to know. There is no real transparency if you are collecting unaccounted money in a box in your house!
Unfortunately Supreme Leader has had to rush to his house to defuse the situation, pun intended. Meanwhile we have been told that the bomb deposited in the donation box was a dummy, stolen from Baiganpally ammo depot. This raises the question – what are dummy bombs doing inside ammo depot? But we will save it for another episode.