I don’t trust my government

I uninstalled from my phone the UMANG app which “allows you to access Indian Government services online through web and mobile (phone)”.  It was installed because I received a message that hereafter all notifications regarding my EPF would be sent only via this app.  But when I saw that the app was demanding too much from me, like access to my contact list, to the picture gallery in my phone, to my email contact list, to the files on my phone and so on, I put my foot down and said No.  I don’t trust my government so much, I’m sorry.

Source: Here

There are quite a few other apps that I use which also demand a few permissions which I have given.  But I’m willing to trust those service providers – willy-nilly, though – more than my government.  For example, I trust my bank whose app also demands quite a few peeps into my private affairs.  I trust Google which actually peeps too much.  Why don’t I trust my government?

My government has never given me satisfactory service at any time in my life.  It has only taken as much as it could whenever it could in various disguises.  It continues to suck my blood and I know the process will end only when my body is taken to the grave.  No, not even then.  One of my dearest ones will be sucked in the name of my death certificate even after I bid the final adieu to the government. 

Now Punjab National Bank has been asked to pay the “entire ₹11,360 crore to counterparty banks in the alleged fraud involving jeweller Nirav Modi.”  Where will PNB get the money from?  They will obviously charge it from their hapless customers in the name of various service charges as State Bank of India did.  By penalising accounts without minimum balance alone, SBI earned ₹1771 crore during April-Nov 2017, a sum that surpassed their net profit of ₹1,582 crore.  Those who could not save even the minimum balance, the underprivileged people of India, were penalised in order to pay for the offences of the richest defaulters in the country like Nirav Modi.  Now, PNB will ape SBI and the impecunious Indians will atone for Modi's sins.

Let us recall the fact that Nirav Modi was one of the Indian businessmen who accompanied Prime Minister Modi to the World Economic Forum in Davos recently.  Reports are also coming out about the Chhota Modi’s (as Congress named him instantly) associations with the Ambanis and Adanis who are the virtual rulers of the country today and whose huge debts to SBI were also indirectly put on the poor of the nation. 

How does such a government expect me to trust it and its apps which seek too many accesses into my private affairs?

If the government had fulfilled a fraction of its electoral and post-election promises, if the country’s best orator’s words carried a modicum of sincerity, I would have been tempted to retain my trust in the government.  Now when the best orator appears on the TV I hear myself chuckling; I hear others snickering.  The snickers give me hope, hope that stretches to the general elections in 2019.

Until then I shall go without the messages from the EPF department.