Skip to main content

Fastag Extortion

From Deccan Herald

 What India now has is an extortionist government. It raises the prices of everything on a daily basis. Petrol and diesel prices are just conspicuous examples. Today the price of cooking gas went up yet again. Do you know how many times the price of gas has been increased in the month of February alone? Probably, you don't. We have stopped thinking about price rises. We have got used to the mounting prices. Maybe, we have accepted the rising prices as the cost to be paid for keeping Narendra Modi as our PM. Maybe, this is what patriotism means: attaining multiple orgasms while being screwed wholesale by your government. 

What are we to Mr Narendra Modi? Are we citizens or subjects? 

In the olden days there were kings and subjects. Not citizens. We have been taken back to those old days by Mr Modi. Of course, he is in love with old days. He spoke to us no end about the greatness of the old days. Now we are there: king and subjects. No more citizens of a democracy. 

The king has dedicated a stadium to himself. The Motera cricket stadium has been named Narendra Modi stadium by our President. Who is the President? Well, we know him, don't we? He will be remembered by posterity as the Head of a state who usurped a stadium from India's first deputy Prime Minister and freedom fighter and handed it over on a platter to a narcissist with the deference of a galley slave.  

I was in hospital the other day attending to my wife who had been admitted for a few days with a rather serious medical situation. As I sat outside the intensive care unit, a message landed in my phone which read: "As per record, vehicle no PQR is not issued a FASTag. Non-fitment of FASTag is a violation of CMVR 1989 and liable for penalty. Get a FASTag today..." 

I live in a village in Kerala and have never had to pass through a toll gate in all my driving years in the state so far. The nearest toll gate is some 100 km away and I don't think I'll ever have to go anywhere near it. Why should someone like me fit a FASTag to my car? Why does the government extort money like this from us? We pay road taxes, vehicle taxes, insurance and its taxes, fuel taxes, maintenance taxes... an endless array of taxes for the simple convenience of owning a vehicle. Now another burden which is nothing short of plunder for people like me who never drive on those elite highways. Moreover, banks are charging fines too for not keeping minimum prescribed amounts in these FASTag accounts. Indian banks have already looted Rs300 crore from FASTag users, according to a news report I read this morning. Not only the government has turned looters in Modi's India!

Has there ever been such an insensitive government in independent India so far? Yet why is this man still worshipped like a god? I know the answer but won't say it. Find out yourself. 

Comments

  1. जितेन्द्र माथुरMarch 2, 2021 at 1:56 PM

    I am in complete agreement with yourself as I am also sailing in the same boat. This is an extortionist government beyond doubt. And the question asked by you in the penultimate line is for everybody like you and me. And yes, each one of us has to find his answer himself only.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMarch 2, 2021 at 4:13 PM

      Our country has become a frustrating place in too many ways. I wonder when the tide will turn. It has to turn anyway.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
18 comments
Read more

The Chhattisgarh Story

Deforestation in Chhattisgarh Kerala’s Catholic Church is teeming with rage these days because of the arrest of two nuns in Chhattisgarh on false charges. No one seems to understand the real politics behind the Modi government’s enmity towards Christian missionaries in Chhattisgarh as well as other backward states in its neighbourhood. Modi is selling the tribal areas and forestlands to the corporate sector part by part, his friend Adani being the chief benefactor. The Christian missionaries are a severe hindrance in that commerce. Let us get some facts right, at least. The Adivasi villagers allege that Gram Sabhas (local governing bodies) were forged or manipulated under pressure from Adani and the BJP government officials in order to take away their lands. In Hasdeo Aranya, minutes of the local body meetings were altered to show the villagers’ consent for land transfers. Also, the Chhattisgarh Scheduled Tribes Commission found that Panchayat secretaries were detained and coerc...
10 comments
Read more

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...
16 comments
Read more

The Ironies of Power: Modi at Gangaikonda-Cholapuram

When Narendra Modi posed for one of his infinite photo-ops framed against the gopuram of the ancient Gangaikonda-Cholapuram Temple on 27 July 2025, one of the biggest ironies of history was created. Gangaikonda-Cholapuram was the capital of Rajendra Chola (r 1014-1044) who was much different from Modi upon whom the BJP leader H Raja conferred the title of the “Living Gangai Kondan”. Rajendra Chola’s empire was marked by pluralism. He built temples but was not a religious bigot. The differences don’t end there. They just begin. Rajendra Chola was a Tamil ruler and a symbol of Dravidian pride. A man like Modi, who is using every means at his disposal to impose Aryan-centric ideology and suppress India’s diverse cultures, religions, and languages, can never truly wear the mantle once borne by Rajendra Chola. Modi’s very presence in the ancient Chola capital looks like a grotesque appropriation of a legacy that resists his political agenda.   The Chola Empire patronised multipl...
4 comments
Read more