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 Ghost of a Banyan Tree

  Image from here Fiction Jaichander Varma could not sleep. It was past midnight and the world outside Jaichander Varma’s room was fairly quiet because he lived sufficiently far away from the city. Though that entailed a tedious journey to his work and back, Mr Varma was happy with his residence because it afforded him the luxury of peaceful and pure air. The city is good, no doubt. Especially after Mr Modi became the Prime Minister, the city was the best place with so much vikas. ‘Where’s vikas?’ Someone asked Mr Varma once. Mr Varma was offended. ‘You’re a bloody antinational mussalman who should be living in Pakistan ya kabristan,’ Mr Varma told him bluntly. Mr Varma was a proud Indian which means he was a Hindu Brahmin. He believed that all others – that is, non-Brahmins – should go to their respective countries of belonging. All Muslims should go to Pakistan and Christians to Rome (or is it Italy? Whatever. Get out of Bharat Mata, that’s all.) The lower caste Hindus co...
122 comments
Read more

Unromantic Men

Romance is a tenderness of the heart. That is disappearing even from the movies. Tenderness of heart is not a virtue anymore; it is a weakness. Who is an ideal man in today’s world? Shakespeare’s Romeo and Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s Devdas would be considered as fools in today’s world in which the wealthiest individuals appear on elite lists, ‘strong’ leaders are hailed as nationalist heroes, and success is equated with anything other than traditional virtues. The protagonist of Colleen McCullough’s 1977 novel, The Thorn Birds [which sold more than 33 million copies], is torn between his idealism and his natural weaknesses as a human being. Ralph de Bricassart is a young Catholic priest who is sent on a kind of punishment-appointment to a remote rural area of Australia where the Cleary family arrives from New Zealand in 1921 to take care of the enormous estate of Mary Carson who is Paddy Cleary’s own sister. Meggy Cleary is the only daughter of Paddy and Fiona who have eight so...
39 comments
Read more

Goodbye, Little Ones

They were born under my care, tiny throbs of life, eyes still shut to the world. They grew up under my constant care. I changed their bed and the sheets regularly making sure they were always warm and comfortable. When one of them didn’t open her eyes after a fortnight of her birth, I rang up my cousin who is a vet and got the appropriate prescription that gave her the light of day in just two days. I watched each one of them stumble through their first steps. Today they were adopted. I personally took them to their new home, a tiny house of a family that belongs to the class that India calls BPL [Below Poverty Line]. I didn’t know them at all until I stopped my car a little away from their small house, at the nearest spot my car could possibly reach. They lived in another village altogether, some 15 km from mine. Sometimes 15 km can make a world of difference. A man who looked as old as me had come to my house in the late afternoon. “I’d like to adopt your kittens,” he said. He...
6 comments
Read more