Commentary/Pritish Nandy
Extortion, a national pastime
Every morning you pick up the newspaper to read about extortions.
Extortions by the Dawood, Abu Salem gang. Extortions by Gawli
men. Extortions by Chhota Rajan. Extortions by any number of small
time hoods and local thugs who have climbed on to the bandwagon
of easy money.
The victims are no longer corrupt businessmen or flashy movie
stars or dishonest builders. They are not even music company maliks
and movie predictors, diamond merchants and jewellers, hoteliers
and restaurant owners, who fund their exorbitant lifestyles with
hot cash. Those whom we normally associate with shady deals and
gangland wars. Today's victims are small people. Employees. Small
time traders. Professionals. Even streetside vendors. They are
being hunted down and harassed.
Extortion has assumed epidemic proportions.
But it is not Bombay alone. Much of India is in its throes. Bihar
and UP have always been hotbeds of crime and corruption, we
all know. Extortions there are commonplace. Veerappan down South
has entered the same game. So have the Naxalites in Andhra. The
ULFA. The Bodos. The NLFT of Tripura. The Jharkhandis. The Harkat
ul Ansar. The CPI-ML. The Ranvir Sena. Wherever you look, extortion
is growing. In the name of religion, politics, caste, region.
In the name of social justice. In the name of militancy and terrorism,
when all other arguments fail.
In Assam, ULFA is extorting tea companies. So are the Bodos.
What is even more worrying, they are extorting the State as well.
Even government bodies in Assam are paying them hafta.
If rumours are to be believed, no one can live there without
paying for protection. In Delhi last weekend, the police discovered
that Babloo Srivastava was masterminding extortions from Naini
jail in Allahabad, together with a Dubai-based don and another
convict lodged in Tihar jail. Using cellular phones from their
cells.
But it is not only the militants and the criminals who extort
us. The state extorts us too. A profligate government extorts
us to pay higher wages to a vast army of overpaid, underemployed
public servants. It extorts us in the name of subsidies, public
works, defence expenditure, social justice. Every rupee made by
corrupt politicians is paid for by us. Each time Ram Vilas Paswan
hires thousands of dalits in the railways and Laloo Prasad pampers
his constituency of backwards, you and I pay for it. Directly
through taxes. Indirectly through duties, through the hydra-headed
monster of inflation. For extortion is like cancer. You may not
notice it at first. But once it spreads, it is a killer.
There was a time when for every rupee you and I earned by the
sweat of our brow, we were expected to pay a tax of more than
what we earned! It was daylight robbery. But because the State
was extorting, no one could do much about it. Palianappan Chidambaram's
problems today lie in those awful years when a stupid, unreasonable
government forced us to change from a nation of honest tax payers
into a nation of tax evaders. Corruption grew. But no one ever
had the courage to put Morarji Desai in the dock, for destroying
our moral temper, Instead, in a typically hypocritical gesture,
we rewarded him with a Bharat Ratna.
Luckily, the wheel has turned full circle and we now realise that
politics -- and men like Desai -- have impoverished India, not the
tax evaders. In fact, when Chidambaram became finance minister,
like most Indians, I felt proud that we had a minister who did
not mouth clichés and political slogans, but was genuinely
interested in opening up the economy and making India free. After
all, a free society and a free economy always go hand in hand.
Yet, the opening up of the economy and the dismantling of the
old, corrupt structures of the licence Raj have not changed attitudes.
While taxes are far more realistic now, old habits die hard. Tax
evaders are still not paying up and the state, instead of educating
its citizens, telling them how important it is to pay their taxes
and contribute to the national wealth, is resorting to another
kind of extortion. Raids. While the VDIS may be an excellent scheme
for habitual tax offenders, for common citizens who avoid their
taxes, raids is not the answer. Education is. Persuasion is.
In fact, many societies have used taxes as correctional strategy.
Fiscal incentives have succeeded in reducing population growth,
environmental degradation, civic problems. India can do the same
if we give up this attitude of extortion and banda baazi.
Punishment cannot correct a nation's lifestyle. Like encounters
cannot stop terrorism. Understanding may. An intelligent, informed,
interactive campaign for the VDIS would have succeeded far more
in ensuring tax compliance than raids. For raids, whoever may
conduct them, are always seen as extortion. And, once extortion
is legitimised by the state, others step in. The underworld. The
militants. The politicians. The local thugs.
There are many Indians who do not only bear the brunt of extortion
rackets run by the underworld. They pay protection money to the
police, to the politicians, to the slum lords. They pay protection
money to militants. They even pay the countless regulatory authorities
to ensure that they can live a normal, safe, uninterrupted life.
You can call it hafta if you want. You can call it taxes.
You can call it rishwat. But the purpose is the same. To
buy peace, protection, safety, continuity. The prime minister
has called for a stop to corruption. But corruption and extortions
go hand in hand. And, to set an example, the State must stop its
own extortions. It must stop robbing Peter to pay Paul. It must
stop making wasteful expenditure. It must put in place laws that
stop the bullying of the common citizen, rich or poor. TADA, MISA,
FERA, COFEPOSA have no place in a civilised society.
Otherwise, every point of intervention will eventually become
a point of extortion. Whether it is an octroi naka or a
local thana or a pooja pandal. Whether it is a traffic
light or a village court or a municipal office. Whether it is
a school or a college where you want to admit you kids. Whether
it is a cinema hall or a late night bar or a temple where you
have gone for devi darshan. Someone will always be there to harass
you, intimidate you, extort you, He could be a thug or a white
collar criminal, a government official or a militant or just a
greedy poojari seeking to make an extra buck. Whoever it is, he
will be just another part of this huge extortion machinery that
seems to taking over our lives.
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