Loanee common man, defrauding businessman and bad debts

To the common man, the gigantic bank scams involving thousands of crores of rupees is an enigma. More exactly, a nightmare to which norms of common sense do not apply. Anything is possible and nothing is real.

I am a bank defaulter to the tune of a few thousand rupees. The manager summons me and warns me of dire consequences. I get frightened. I sell my cow and clear my dues. My rich neighbour strides into the manager’s cabin. He has been a defaulter to the tune of hundreds of crores. He asks for more loans. No questions asked. Over a cup of deferential tea, more loans are sanctioned.

Would the bank manager have indulged my rich neighbour in this fashion, if the mega bucks the latter borrowed belonged to him? So, the very first thing to reckon is that the money mismanaged by our cavalier bankers is not their money. It is “our money” that, within the system becomes, overnight, “their money”.

There is yet another aspect to this, to illustrate which I need to invoke a personal experience that goes back to 1982. I was living then in the block tutor’s suite in Allnutt South of St Stephen’s College. Chief among my worldly possessions was a typewriter. One day, it was stolen by one of our students, taken to the “chor bazar” in Delhi and sold for peanuts. Why are stolen goods sold cheap all over the world? Isn’t it because the persons who pass for their owners have no respect for their true value? 

The scamsters in the banking system may not be dealing in stolen goods in a literal sense. But they are in a similar context, as the wares they vend belong not to them.

There is this other thing besides that we need to mind. Economists tell us that money is a necessary medium of exchange. They sound convincing too; for have we not, after all, abandoned the barter system a long time ago? But what they will never tell us is that money loses all its ‘exchange value’ when it is vitiated with violence. 

Let me illustrate: Suppose I take the buffalo I have bred to the cattle market. Money, in this case, can serve as an approximate equivalent to the worth of my buffalo. I know the value of the labour the cow has incurred. On the contrary, if I am taking a stolen buffalo to the same market, what price tag can I put on it? The difference between the two buffalos is that the latter buffalo is not only an item of merchandise but also of violence.

If we do not reckon this, we shall never understand why the perpetrators of the serial mega scams do not, and cannot, know the anger we feel. They have no idea of the “value” of what they despoil. The crores they process are no better than stolen buffalos. Their value, if any, will be aroused only when the corresponding scam is unearthed. Scams denote the clash between the value of our money against its valuelessness in the hands of scamsters.

My concern here is not, primarily, with banking. I am an ordinary citizen who gets scared when the money I entrust to banks is allowed to disappear into the black-hole called non-performing assets. I am an imperiled citizen of this country burdened with a modicum of common sense and patriotism.

Cattle thieves

To me, these banking scams illustrate what is ailing our patriotism. A true patriot is not only one who flies the national flag at a prescribed height. A patriot is one who treats national wealth as carefully as he would treat his personal wealth. Or, one who does not handle public assets like stolen buffalos. There is also this other side of patriotism. On our part, we have a duty to treat these scamsters as ‘thieves’. In their hands, the taxpayers’ money becomes like stolen buffalos. They are cattle thieves who rob citizens of their buffalos.

The Mallyas of this world are, at worst, expert players in the “chor bazars” of the country. They have an uncanny knack for smelling out vendors of stolen buffalos. It does not help to blame them alone. We too are to blame for not being discerning enough to see through the criminality that institutionalises this nightmare.

Catching and punishing a few super thieves, or retrieving a few of the stolen buffalos, is not the solution, necessary though it is. Meaningful patriotism – the sense in which I have ventured to define it here – is.

We have to confront the violence that corrodes our society. Violence ruins the value of everything, including life. The hallmark of a peaceful society is the value it attaches to life. And the practical proof that we respect life, as Gandhiji taught us, is the spirit of trusteeship. From seeing even private wealth in light of trusteeship to handling public assets like stolen buffalos, we have slipped down several rungs on the ladder of public morality.

In a society infected with violence, money ceases to be a measure of value. Crime and corruption go hand-in-hand. True patriots readily realise that scams are crimes against the nation. They will denounce not only those who have their hands in the till but also those who whitewash the crime, invoking silly technicalities or obscuring its enormity with a smoke screen of factional polemics.

It’s time to look reality in the face. Is it an accident that minions of political patronage like Lalit Modi and Vijay Mallya need their hide-outs in London? And those who bleed this country, their overseas tax havens to secure their loot? Why is India unsafe for these smart honchos, but safe for those who facilitate their crimes?

(The writer is former Principal, St Stephen’s College, Delhi)