In a tax free world, at the prevailing price of crude oil, a thousand rupees would have got us around fifty liters of petrol. In reality, we don’t get even twenty! Likewise, we all pay tax on almost every single item we buy in the market. It is estimated that an Indian citizen pays about 30 paisa out of every rupee he/she earns as taxes to the central and State Governments. If one takes into account the per capita net national income (income per person) at 90,000 rupees, an average Indian citizen contributes about 27000 rupees to the Public Treasury every year. The per capita income in Goa being the highest, at three times the national average, one can safely assume the figure to be thrice as much.
This by itself is not a reason to complain as the Government needs money to run Public services and the rate of taxation in many developed countries is even higher. But the unfortunate yet funny thing is that after contributing so much to the Public Treasury, many of us here have no compunctions in entrusting the “keys” to just about any scoundrel ready to pay us a few Gandhi notes at the time of elections!
For a while, let’s throw all morals, values and ethics to the wind and talk only Business… If we contribute around one lakh rupees to the Public Treasury every year, half of which is systematically siphoned off, our vote should have been worth at least one lakh and not a miserable two thousand rupees! Selling our vote is nothing short of selling ourselves and if we have to do it, why sell ourselves so cheap? Besides, a vote is not only about entrusting someone with our hard earned money, its means very much more because the performance of these elected worthies impact the course of our lives on a day to day basis!
As elections approach, a certain class of people get hyper energized- they could be your friendly neighborhood goons, ‘social workers’, local level politicians or all of this rolled into one. These are the agents; the link between the candidates and the voters. In normal circumstances, no candidate can expect to win elections without a sizable number of such agents on his side.
Willy, who I met at the market place recently, is a typical specimen of this class. A warm handshake followed by South Goa’s favorite conversation-Starter “kit fobor”, got us talking. Soon we were discussing the forth coming Assembly elections and the chances of various aspiring candidates… Every time I mentioned a name, Willy would interrupt to say “Does he/she have the money?”, until I zeroed down on his favorite two – perhaps he is still negotiating! I told
Willy that it’s only in migrant dominated areas like Zuari-Nagar that one may need money to bribe voters. At this Willy stared at me with a sarcastic smile and kick started his motorbike as if to say how irritating & useless it was to talk politics with a naïve guy like me … After calming down, the veteran of many election battles told me in a authoritative tone that at least 30% of the Goans, cutting across social & economic lines, take bribes to vote. I also learnt a new definition of the word ‘honest ‘: according to Wily, the migrants are more honest than locals because when they are bought, they stay bought!
According to Willy, our law does not forbid anyone to sell his/her vote. Is it really? He also said that the people who are paid money are not discriminated against but actually considered as “Amgelea” and marked for preferential treatment over others. I chided Willy for being part of such a shameful fraud. “Are empty promises better than money?” countered the visibly annoyed veteran as he took off.
It’s an open secret that money plays a huge role in today’s elections, but I still doubted Willy’s claim on locals being so vulnerable to bribes so I asked around with other Agents and confirmed the fact.
According to Moses, some Goans (this includes well off senior citizens) have got so used to getting paid that they even resort to verbal abuse if their expectations are not met.
Wise men say that the best advice one can give a hungry man is bread. But Goa is one of the most literate States having the highest per capita income in the country. Why do we sell our souls so cheap? We skin the politicians at the time of elections and they skin us every single day during the next five years! When will this disgusting vicious cycle end?
