PORTRAIT OF SCAMSTERS AS YOUNG ARTISTS

2010 .. what a year .. to me it has been one of those years in Indian history where our politicians and cronies could get up from their broken parliament seats and sing R.Kelly style : “I believe I can fly …”. It has been that year when we truly became a nation to reckon with . We were the tortoise to China’s hare .. Sheila to USA’s Munni (all figuratively) . Its not because of the fact that in 2010 the government ‘announced’ national development programs worth billions of bucks (naming it right after Indira Gandhi to her unborn sister’s second nephew) or the government decided to build thousands of westernized toilets across the country or Pranab Mukherjee’s English pronunciation improved or Carla Bruni visited us ; these are just minor wafers compared to the transition we made in 2010. We finally let go of our horrid past of petty scams running into a  few crores concerning petty stuffs like cow fodder or stamp papers to more international standards of complex scams like 2G and CWG.

So while Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh were playing “Dumb and Dumber” in a sequel to their movie “Roop ki rani Choron ka Raja “ and Rahul Gandhi (PRAISE BE UPON HIM) was busy posting cowdung cakes on a Dalit woman’s Facebook wall, the Raja’s , the Kalmadi’s and the Modi’s tangoed their way into our wallets and raped it 70’s hindi movie style . While previously we used to feel low about scam names like ‘HAWALA’  or ‘CHARA GHOTALA’ compared to the likes of  something like the WATERGATE , it was only because of these people we had scams with plots which would make Christopher Nolan movies seem like public service messages . Together they plundered amounts which would have been enough to sponsor 300 of Obama’s business trips to India or add two more storeys to the mansion Anil Ambani is building his wife . It could have also been used to save the poor cattles living in the villages of India who eventually die of hunger or pressure of debt (but I guess that features low on everyones list ..who cares for cattles ..they are no cute stripey tiger) .

Which is my favourite scam you ask … I’ll say CWG ..as an aspiring B-school aspirant it taught me the whole new methods of violating the golden rule of economics – Supply and Demand . Well there has never been a huge demand for toilet papers in India so the prices should be low , but somehow Kalmadi managed to fudge up accounts and get for 12000 a roll . Or wait …maybe there was a great demand for them .. well you do need a lot of toilet paper to wrap around the eyes of  the Justice statue : the one that is there in every court of India holding a faulty balance .