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Pritish Nandy

The State as bribetaker

There are two sets of laws in India. One for the rich and the corrupt. The other for the common man. For you and me. Both sets of laws have been created by the State and even though every government loudly denies this, they are the ones who keep framing these laws. For the simple reason that governments, whatever their political pretensions may be, are always on the side of the rich and the corrupt.

Why? Because the rich and the corrupt bankroll them, bring them to power in the first place. That is why the government sucks up to them.

Last week, we saw yet another example of this. When the railways announced their new tatkal scheme.

New is perhaps a wrong word. The tatkal scheme is not new. The telephone guys introduced it some years back. Then the gas guys did it. The idea is very simple: If you have the money, you can jump the queue.

There are many people waiting for a gas connection, a telephone line, a ration card. Most of them have been in queue for years, waiting to get what they could have got off the shelf in any other country in the world. But here, in India, they have to stand in line, beg and crawl before countless wicked and corrupt officials to get what they are ready to pay for. Yet they get it after years. After paying a premium under the table.

Instead of catching these wicked and corrupt government officials, who are protected by their political masters, the State has devised this wonderful new scheme which takes my breath away by its sheer audacity. The tatkal scheme. This scheme ensures that the State grabs a share in the loot. It becomes the blackmarketeer, the pimp, the bribe taker. Officially.

tatkal means speed money. Money you pay to jump the queue. To push back those poor fools who have stood in line for years to get what you can now grab just like that by paying a bribe to the State. In the name of tatkal.

So successful has been this tatkal scheme that now the railways have introduced it. You can walk across and buy your ticket now at the last moment, not by booking in advance nor by bribing touts and station masters. All you have to do is pay a bribe of Rs 50 to the Indian Railways officially, in the name of the tatkal scheme, and get your ticket from the ticket window. While those idiots who have been waiting in queue for months and weeks can go to hell. After all, no one asked them to walk the straight and the narrow.

This is a new style of raising revenue. What was always seen as filthy bribing but now, in the era of liberalisation, it is described as a tatkal scheme. Instant orgasm. Sponsored by an amoral State desperately in need of cash to balance its books. It is no use saying that this money would have, otherwise, gone to some tout or pimp because, by the same logic, the government should be pushing drugs and running whore houses. It is not the government's job to replace middlemen. It is their job to eliminate them.

The VDIS is, in many ways, an identical scheme. Every honest tax payer who has paid absurdly high taxes over the years to amass his wealth must be outraged at the way tax evaders are being allowed to pay a mere 30 per cent today and get away with all their black money earned and used over the years. I have no doubt this is good for the Indian economy but, somehow, I cannot but be shocked by the sheer amorality of the idea. In the short term, this may balance the nation's books. But, in the long run, it will breed more tax evaders, who will earn and use their cash unabashedly, waiting for the next laundering scheme to be announced by the State.

This is, in fact, the tragedy of India. We are a moral nation ruled by immoral people. But because we are so feudal, we refuse to fight back. We accept the way the government cheats us, bullies us, thugs us, robs us. What is even worse, we are now blindly accepting official schemes that are meant to legitimise what has always been seen as wrong or criminal.

Earlier, we practised communalism and casteism in our lives but we were too ashamed to acknowledge it. Now we openly vote for communal or casteist parties. In fact, the middle classes no longer see communalism or casteism as something to be embarrassed about. Earlier, our businessmen supported political parties from behind the scenes. Now, they openly root for them. They are nominated to Parliament in return for hard cash. It is another kind of tatkal scheme. You pay a premium and get into politics. Sidestepping those who have spent years working at the grass root level.

In the process, we are creating a society of slime balls. We are perpetuating the institution of bribing and corruption. We are enshrining the virtues of touting and pimping. We are creating what you could call a tatkal society. tatkal people in search of tatkal opportunities. In the name of quickening things. Under the pretence of cutting short the queues that beset our lives.

That is why you never get movie tickets at the right price. Even the hall owners reportedly share in the blackmarketing of tickets. Every full house has a gang of touts selling tickets in the opposite lane. All you have to pay them is a tatkal fee.

Every Indian Airlines flight you try to book yourself on is always full. But go to a travel agent and he will make sure you get a seat. All you have to pay is a tatkal fee. And when you get onto the flight, you are likely to see it more than half empty.

For years, this has happened to Test match tickets. Touts sell them openly outside the stadium. For a tatkal fee. In fact, anything you want anywhere is available. Gold. Gucci. Gaultier. All you need to do is pay the tatkal fee. You pay it for school admissions, for ration cards, for lodging FIRs at the local police station, for getting seats in medical colleges. For enrolling your name in the local employment exchange. For getting a sidey role in a movie that may never get made. Even for getting your stubborn tenant to vacate your flat. Or your voters to stamp the ballot card in your favour.

Bofors paid it. HDW paid it. Enron paid it. Karsan paid it.

It is the price for living in India. Irrespective of whether you are rich or poor, where you come from, who your parents are, what you do. You have to pay tatkal just to stay alive. Even the people who live on the streets and in the slums pay it. Even rickshaw drivers and whores pay it.

For we are now the tatkal generation. About to break the queue of history, tradition, values and morality. No wonder, India weeps.

Pritish Nandy