Article - 36 Week 45
Diwali Should Not Be Used To Grease Palms:
It's the season of Diwali celebration. Walk in to any of our government offices (Related to our beloved shipping industry) and watch the gaiety with a flurry of activities. Palms are being generously greased from top to bottom. How can you say no to 'gifts' in the season of gifts? Our tradition & faith sanctions this on us. Looking at gifts' through any other lens is not only blasphemous, but also considered unsocial! However, when you polish your lenses you would be dazzled with the ugly stream of raw cash, cash vouchers, gold Jewellery, gold coins with imprints of gods & goddesses, vulgarly expensive stuff wrapped in colourful wrappers and boxes of varying sizes from very small to extremely large. Don't be fooled by the sizes of the boxes. Even the smallest can contain a large fortune and an extra large could be just plainly an ego massager. Sweets & dry fruits are considered ordinary - just in case you need a favour or signature for your file in the coming year!
I am no party-pooper. Celebrations add flavours to our lives, carrying with them messages of wisdom and bringing people & their spirits together. Every one loves gifts. Both receiving & offering is a joy. They are voluntarily done. Gifts as tokens of good wishes, have been acceptable in the business world and the holy corridors of government offices. We must look at the stretch of this tokenism. In feudal times - from medieval period till the British Raj - the king or the zamindar would insist on expensive gifts from his subjects. And so the subjects would yield in or face the music later. This is how the season of 'gifts' mutated itself to perversely legitimise bribery & coercion. In fact baksheesh, even when demanded in exchange for a favour or personal gain, is not perceived as a bribe in our culture.
In our times and over times, we have strangulated our culture to a grotesque format of socially accepted channel of corruption & bribery. You are considered a nerd if you refuse to indulge in this insane game. In our holy government offices, the gift distribution is a social art. Not every one can do that with effect & flair. The bigger officers need a wrapped one and give you that quizzical look as to the price of the contents. Some even don't hesitate to ask artfully, about the contents & push you for a settlement. I heard one asking for an iPad for his daughter. The middle level babus are the most difficult to handle. They are greedy to their bones and at the same time do't like to be noticed taking away larger wraps. They prefer gift-vouchers to be on the safe side. They can buy what they want and no one can catch them red-handed. They are the ones possessing the ability to push the files in 360 degrees directions, if they have to frustrate your purpose. So there is no way to offend them or fall below their expectations. You have to succumb to this class of babus. Then you have the small or little babus to take care. They are generally unpretentious. They would haggle hard. They prefer cash only. They are too small to be caught & have some unions or the other to bail them out, in case something untoward happens. Since, they are under the watchful eyes of the middle-level-babus, you need not pay them seemingly less and actually more - if they hold the power to spin your file. Some of these guys are so crafty that they can push around your file so deftly and quickly that you can not but love them. After this level is taken care, you have to anoint the lift-men & the peons. Although they would settle for a small amount, the smart donors should be generous at this point. At times they have the power to impede the passage of files much to the bewilderment of bigger & smaller babus.
Still there would be few to be left out of public contact. Diwali is the time, to hijack the peace & happiness of the public to extract pounds & pounds of flesh, that too with a social sanction. The municipality babus will be scurrying from place to place to slap silly violations, the cars would be towed with unmatched efficiency, the poor hawkers would be driven mercilessly on the road sides like cattle, the health inspectors would belch for baksheesh, and even traffic cops would be over-active on those restricted left-turns where the red-light is hidden by foliage or is placed in most inconspicuous disposition for the drivers to notice. As an extreme show of frustration, an auto driver set the erring cop on fire, who demanded Rs 200/ from the poor guy for carrying 5 passengers instead of officially permitted 4 - just a few days back.
It is an orgy of loot, mayhem and degradation of human dignity. These transactions are not what Diwali stands for. This is no celebration of triumph of good over evil. This is all about giving 'evil' an acceptable & legitimate space in our social and business space. The gifts are rarely tokens or willingly parted with. There is barely any goodwill or joy wrapped in them. They are a 'give' or bribery for a bigger 'takeaway' in the future or it could mean to placate the babus against any negative roadblock in the future, or an unpretentious public loot.
Brgds
Capt Rath
Econship Marine
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