Now this is turning out to be a sick charade. While no doubt scams are raging fast and furious, fasts themselves are becoming some kind of a scam. The urge to put an end to loot of public money is surely commendable and pervasive. More so when not only lakhs of crores but even whole telephone exchanges disappear into the ministerial kitty. Graft has achieved the status of a craft. But one cannot also help wondering if all of us, indignant multitudes, ourselves are prone to dipping into pockets other than ours as a habit. While this could be true of humanity as a whole, Indians particularly seem to have, shall we say, nerves of ‘steal’!
So let’s for a change forget the Rajas, Marans and Kalmadis, the most recent descendants in the hierarchy of looters that dates back to the booming days of Bofors and even before. While the all that loot looks lost for good, the looters at least are likely to be in the dock for the forseeable future. Instead, let us focus on the, er, uncivil society now so vehemently ranged against them. I am not just alluding to Annas, Babas and assorted activists who themselves may or may not be clean, but the entire nation that is crying itself hoarse. Well, the proverbial four fingers pointing inwards are quite damning. We seem to deserve our leaders!
To us public property is nobody’s property. But it does become our own if no one is watching or in the dead of night. Street lights, manhole covers and roadside dustbins are the most in demand. Vanishing telephone cables and associated equipment were a phenomenon long before rational ministers thought up tele spectrum thefts. EB cables and transformer parts have always been the toast of nocturnal nomads who also supposedly had at their command the necessary equipment and enterprise to perform such ‘shocking’ escapades without risks. But with many overhead cables going underground, the underground has reportedly gone on to greener pastures. But under or above, power thefts are as rife as ever and mind you, the political parties are not the sole pilferers.
Let us exit the streets and manmade public utilities and move on to God’s own offerings. Sand, land, oil, water and minerals are ripe pickings for the bounty hunters of nature. While social conscious scientists, spiritualists and scores of philosophers have always held the private commercial exploitation of nature’s resources as a loot of common property, the exploiters themselves are not totally insulated from lesser thieves. The government formally allows sand quarrying but look at river beds and former ponds and you may actually be staring into the Earth’s crust itself. With demand for housing and constructions booming, the sand mafias, that have political blessings, are unstoppable, till probably we reach a stage where there is very little of earth to build with and build on.
While multi-national mineral water corporates suck the ground dry with official sanction, bubble-top small timers routinely tap into corporation water. And we don’t complain because our own water meters, like auto meters, can be tweaked to advantage. Therefore, with due respect for honour among thieves, water thefts never reach a boiling point.World over oil pipelines are dicey targets on par with minerals like uranium and copper. India’s privitisation of the oil sector is a criminal loot of monstrous proportions, particularly when petrol, diesel and LPG are direct fuels of inflation.
Glorified greats like Alexander and Columbus were essentially land grabbers. The ‘civilised’ imperial colonists took over that mantle. Today, land grab is the preserve of a common conman who could be a local political dada or a random rowdy. Any vacant land, with or without a compound, is waiting to be occupied by anyone other than the owner. For the record, the documents can always be duplicated. That good fences make for good neighbours is no longer a truism. On the contrary, the mango on the neighbour’s tree always tastes sweeter!
At PDS and ration shops it is rice thefts, while the rest of the essentials are subject to price thefts, rain or shine. The theft in life-saving drugs and medical care happen with a gun at your temple. Incidentally, temple hundis get routinely emptied right under the holy noses of the gods. Social customs give rise to their own versions of loot. Dowry comes to mind, but in the Indian milieu, it is more a voluntary offering and less of a demand. And with gold prices glittering more than gold, you can’t get a sister or daughter married off unless you loot a jewellery shop. This is not to suggest that the regular jewellery heists and the customary chain snatchings are executed by harassed brothers or fathers. Even without such pressing filial responsibilities, shop lifting, from jewel shops to the street corner store, is a favoured pastime. There are actually some disturbing trends of young boys and girls resorting to purloining things like cell phones for pocket money, drugs, drinks and sundry other indulgences. It looks kleptomania is not an innocent disease but a cultivated national culture.
The choices are endless and the champions range from pickpockets to car thieves to sandalwood poachers. There are crop thefts, cattle thefts, pet thefts, car thefts, cart thefts, art thefts, kidney thefts and child thefts, not to speak of wife stealers. We shall exempt spouses and their penny pinching because they are supposed to have stolen each others hearts and so all is fair. In a high tech world, we now have credit card frauds and ID thefts that can wipe out savings at a click with nary a fingerprint. Intellectual property always stands threatened by plagiarists and imitators. Indian filmdom routinely lifts from Hollywood and then raise a hue and cry when their celluloid clones are pirated locally. Ironically, there are some thefts that are deemed auspicious. Some hold that consecrating a stolen Ganesha idol is good augury. Losing your slippers, particularly outside a temple, reportedly wipes out all your bad luck! But for good or bad, citizens of this pious land, nay chor bazaar, are always eying things not their own. Indeed, if fasts can stop loot, the country would have to go hungry till the end of time.
I am now guilty of robbing you of your precious time. You could have certainly put it to better use, say for instance, by pinching something.
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