In Defence of Black Money

The magic is in Rajesh’s mixing – the tossing of the puffed rice, the timing of each wet and dry ingredient and the exact amount of mustard oil that he puts in the jhal muri. You just need to be a little patient as he moves across his push-cart. Rajesh had polio as a child.

Every day, two beat cops come and stand with the small crowd of his dedicated clientele. There’s an unconscious acceptance amongst everyone, that the cops will get priority. Almost everyone who stands there is rich or powerful enough to make the cops wait, but they all know it will get Rajesh into trouble.

I had once asked him how much hafta the cops take from him, for allowing him to stand with his cart at the street corner. He smiled and said that they give him a discount.

“Langda hoon saheb,” he explained. It’s a sympathy rebate that the other thelawalas and hawkers, on the road outside our office, do not get. “Bakiyon ka fix rate hai – koi 500 deta hai, koi do hazaar. Jitni zyaada sale hai, utna zyaada dena padta hai.”

“Aap log complain kyon nahin karte?” I had asked, somewhat indignantly.

Rajesh smiled and said “policewaale, MCD waale, yeh log hafta nahin lenge to phir humko yahaan kaun khada hone dega?”

Things suddenly fell into place. I remembered how, about a year ago, an honest officer had taken over the local thana. The hawkers on the street were raided, their thelas confiscated. They disappeared for almost a month, till the SHO was transferred.

Rajesh is wary of honest officers, who implement the law zealously. He was once evicted from his home by an honest officer. It was in a large cluster of jhuggis that had sprung up on municipality land. Hawkers, daily wagers, maids, rickshaw pullers and an entire range of self-employed entrepreneurs who make up the bulk of India’s service sector, lived in the encroachment.

Like his neighbours, Rajesh paid high rates for an illegal power line to his jhuggi. Like others he paid extortionist prices for water from the private tanker that came every two days. Every month, the local dada – Babubhai – came and collected his share of the money that had to be paid to the cops and the municipality officers.

Rajesh was Babubhai’s favourite. He sometimes came for a packet of bhujiya and for a head massage. Rajesh had strong fingers in strong hands, which had once been broken by a local cop. Babubhai had taken a group of locals and surrounded the thana. The cop had to be transferred.

Babubhai was elected to the local ward, but even he could not stop Inspector Karamvir Singh from getting the jhuggi demolished. Inspector Singh was incorruptible and didn’t fear politicians. He had joined the force to implement the law, and evicting the encroachers was part of that. Later, the Inspector had personally come and given Rajesh 500 rupees, but told him that he must go and live in an authorized colony.

Predictably, Inspector Karamvir was quickly posted to somewhere in the hinterland of Haryana. The encroachers returned, but Babubhai charged an extra fee to make up for lost revenues. Here too, Rajesh got a sympathy discount. His polio made life cheaper for him.

People like Rajesh help generate black-money every day. Bribing allows them to live in the interstices of urban India. They know that the law protects the right to property more than any other right. They survive by breaking these property rights – standing with a thela at the crossing, setting up house on municipality land, stealing electricity from the closest pole.

The bribes go up an interconnected chain, right to the top – to top cops, politicians, ministers, babus and judges. They flow and coalesce as bundles of black money - sometimes as hoards, sometimes as real estate and at other times as gold or even P-notes. It creates a network of power that runs parallel to the network of law and liberty. It weaves together a political society right next to the civil society of middle-class propertied citizens.

Rajesh is the biggest victim of black-money and corruption. But, without it Rajesh would never be able to survive, because, people like Rajesh have no place in the nation of citizens. They will forever remain fragments invisible to the law.