3 minutes reading time
I watched the tea seller at the corner get harassed by the municipal goons this morning. They tossed his aluminum kettle into the back of a truck and smashed half his glass cups because he didn't have the right stamp on a useless piece of paper. He sat on the curb, ruined over a technicality. It made my blood boil. Especially because just a couple of months ago, the real criminals sat in their air-conditioned parliament and retroactively erased their own crimes, and nobody smashed their cups.
Back in March, while the entire country was distracted by whatever garbage outrage the TV channels were feeding everyone, the government slipped something into the Finance Bill of 2016. A tiny amendment to the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA).
Here is the setup: For years, the two massive national parties were illegally taking money from foreign corporations. Specifically, a foreign-registered mining giant called Vedanta was pumping crores into the bank accounts of both the ruling party and the so-called opposition. In 2014, the Delhi High Court caught them dead to rights. Under the law, they were guilty. They broke the rules.
But when you own the referee, you never lose the match. You just blow the whistle and change the rules.
Instead of facing justice, these two parties—who normally fight in public like stray dogs over a rotten coconut—suddenly found their shared humanity. They colluded. They amended the FCRA to redefine what a "foreign company" actually means, effectively legalizing the exact bribes they had already pocketed.
And the absolute kicker? They made the amendment retroactive. They backdated it to 2010. They committed a crime, got caught, and then passed a law saying it wasn't a crime after all.
This is the ultimate betrayal. I used to buy into the illusion of a fierce ideological war between the ruling party and the opposition. They tell you to pick a side, to argue with your neighbors, to vote. But it's all theater for cowards. When the money is on the line, the mask drops. There is no opposition. There is only the machine. A cold, self-preserving entity designed to protect its own.
If I ran a pipe to steal from the city water tank, the police would break my legs and throw me in a cell. If I stood before a judge and said, "Actually, your honor, I've decided to retroactively make my theft legal," they would lock me in a psychiatric ward.
But the master doesn't play by the rules of the slave. They have no conscience. They sell the ground beneath my feet to foreign cartels, take their cut, and then casually rewrite the rulebook to sanitize their hands.
It leaves me exhausted. I realize the entire electoral system is just a rigged game. I stand in those voting lines, sweating under the sun, casting my little ballot, thinking I am choosing my destiny. But the house always wins. They aren't political parties; they are a unified corporate cartel. And I am just a fool funding my own irrelevance.