WORD POWER
Money makes the politician go
Prerana Trehan

IT is ironic that while a majority of Indians live on the breadline, the ones they vote to power live in the lap of luxury. No wonder most people consider a career in politics to be a money spinner. While even the politician holding the most insignificant post can afford to spend money like water, the ordinary Indian has to constantly tighten his belt to make both ends meet.

Take our local MLA, for instance. Before he entered politics, he was a down and out. Then he got a party ticket and spent a small fortune for running his campaign, but within months of being elected, he more than recovered his investment. Now he is counted among the well-heeled residents of the city. His opponents even claimed that he made a killing in a scam that recently came to light.

It seems unfair that the taxes that ordinary citizens pay through their noses should be used to pick up the tab for the politicians’ lavish lifestyles. It is ultimately the man on the street who has to pay the price for everything from their opulent homes to their foreign jaunts.

Be on the breadline: be very poor

Live in the lap of luxury: live an extremely comfortable life, because you have a lot of money

Be a money spinner: have a successful way of making money

Spend money like water: spend too much, often without thinking

Tighten your belt: spend less than you did before, because you have less money

To make both ends meet: to have just enough money to pay for the things that you need

A down and out: someone who has no home, no job and no money

A small fortune: a lot of money

Well-heeled: having plenty of money

Make a killing: earn a lot of money very easily

Come to light: the discovery of facts, often about something bad or illegal

Pay through the nose: pay too much for something

Pick up the tab: pay for something, often something that is not your responsibility

Pay the price for: experience the unpleasant consequences of

Up till 1989, Iron Curtain was used to refer to the boundary between western Europe and the Communist countries of eastern Europe. Russian philosopher Vsily Rozanov, who after the 1917 revolution wrote in 1918, "an iron curtain is descending on Russian history", is credited with coining this phrase. The British wartime Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, used the term in a telegram to President Truman in 1945, shortly after the end of World War II in Europe, to illustrate his anxieties about the demarcation line between the Russian forces and those of the western Allies. It is, perhaps, significant that The Times has printed the expression only nine days earlier in a report translating part of a broadcast by the then German Foreign Minister, who in turn may have known that Goebbels had used the same phrase three months earlier.

There is little doubt that Churchill’s speech at Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri, in 1946, popularised the use of the term Iron Curtain. In this speech he defined what had happened in Europe and was to dominate world politics until the late 1980s in these words: "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent."

(Reference: Cambridge International Dictionary of Idioms and A Concise Dictionary of Phrase and Fable)