Sunny slowly lowers his shades.
His eyes are bloodshot.
“You’ll never be your father.”
The words strike Sunny terribly. Split his brain in two.
“You’ll never be your father, and that’s a good thing. It’s a good thing. I’ll never be mine, you’ll never be yours. But we can be more than both.”
“What do you want?”
“Do you know,” Dinesh says, “how many people there are in this state? Two hundred million, give or take. If we were a country, we’d have the fifth-largest population on earth. And it’s ours. All ours, you and I, we’re supposed to inherit it all. But look at it! Look. The people are miserable. This state is almost as miserable as you are!” He pauses meaningfully. “What’s the common denominator? Our fathers.” Dinesh lowers his voice. “We both know the pact our fathers made: yours bankrolls mine into power, then mine makes them both richer than anyone can imagine. That was the deal. That was the dream, right?”
“If you say so.”
“But it’s turned into a nightmare. Why?”
“Because your father got greedy.”
“No! Because your father is relentless.”
“You’re blaming my father for making too much money now?”
“I’m blaming him for trying to control the world. He wants it all, all the power. He’s a vampire. A locust. He consumes it all. Health care, education, infrastructure, mining, even the media. He has his hand in everything. But he takes from the people.”
“He takes from no one.”
“Don’t be so naive. The hospitals have no medicine. Why? It gets stolen, sold on the black market. To whom? Private hospitals? Who steals it? Who sells it? Who owns the private hospitals? You know who. There’s a pattern emerging. Everything public ends up stripped down, sold, taken away. But what is there in abundance? Liquor. Your father’s liquor, from the sugarcane he grows, through the distilleries he owns, the distribution he controls, to the shops he sells out of. Like the one right across the street. Look at it. It shouldn’t even be open this early in the morning, but there it is. Just so you can forget the misery of your life. It goes round and round. The poor get screwed, and I can see it on your face that you act like you don’t care. And I guess you don’t. So let me put it another way. The poor get screwed, but the poor also vote. They fucking vote, Sunny. It’s the one thing we can’t yet take away from them. We can try to buy them off. More liquor, meat, money. But sooner or later they’ll kick us out.”
Sunny gives a strange, self-satisfied smirk.
“I advised against this land deal of yours,” Dinesh goes on, “this deal to give you your fantasy city. You should know that. I advised against it completely. It’s political suicide. It’s self-immolation. It’s going to be the death of us. The farmers won’t forgive us. They’ll tip things over. Come election time, we’ll be done.”
“Correction. You’ll be done. They’ll vote you out. But the next guy who comes along will smell the money, he’ll smell it and run to my father and fall in line.”
“You believe that, don’t you?” Dinesh replies. “But sooner or later the people will vote in someone who can’t be bought.”
Sunny gets up from the table.
Lights a cigarette.
“Everyone can be bought.”
Reaches into his pocket and tosses several hundred rupee notes down.
Dinesh shakes his head. “You don’t know the monsters you’re letting in the door.”
But Sunny is already walking to the street.
Across to the liquor vend.
He turns, shrugs, give a bitter smile that says: I. Just. Don’t. Fucking. Care.
2007
DEVELOPMENT BEAT
Tales of Precious Dirt
DEAN H. SALDANHA | WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 2007
Forced Acquisition serves private investors under the guise of “public interest.” But farmers in Greater Noida are banding together across caste lines to fight back.
IT’s a kidney-rattling ride to Maycha village in Western Uttar Pradesh’s Gautam Buddh Nagar. The potholed stretch of dirt betrays the dire state of development in this fertile agricultural zone, yet neither road nor settlement will witness the improvements they deserve: both sit within the catchment zone of the UP government’s proposed eight-lane DelhiAgra Expressway. When completed, this “modern marvel” will reduce travel time between the national capital and the Taj Mahal to little over two hours. Meanwhile, Maycha village will be destroyed.