Bribe Cards
Bribe Cards
I have always pointed out the close nexus between politicians, police and criminals in the crime syndicate of our country.
There is very little to distinguish between the three, they have become synonymous.
The last few blogs have been devoted to politicians.
Here is something on the police which has come out in "the Telegraph" of today.
So, with the police being so vigilant, what is to prevent truck loads of RDX and AK-47's moving about freely through the state to Mumbai and other parts of India.
So actually the Pakistanis are not to blame but these three category of government employees.
Radheshyam
In the summer of 2008 The Telegraph came across the system of traffic sergeants issuing passes to goods carriers to enter no-entry zones in return for a monthly fee. Imran Ahmed Siddiqui and Tamaghna Banerjee return to the same area in the winter of 2008-9 to find that the passes weren’t just a passing phase
There is very little to distinguish between the three, they have become synonymous.
The last few blogs have been devoted to politicians.
Here is something on the police which has come out in "the Telegraph" of today.
So, with the police being so vigilant, what is to prevent truck loads of RDX and AK-47's moving about freely through the state to Mumbai and other parts of India.
So actually the Pakistanis are not to blame but these three category of government employees.
Radheshyam
In the summer of 2008 The Telegraph came across the system of traffic sergeants issuing passes to goods carriers to enter no-entry zones in return for a monthly fee. Imran Ahmed Siddiqui and Tamaghna Banerjee return to the same area in the winter of 2008-9 to find that the passes weren’t just a passing phase
The man in a maroon-yellow half-sleeve sweater and bluish lungi smoking a bidi fishes a folded slip out of a small black bag. “This piece of paper is our pass to no-entry zones any time of the day,” Yadav (first name not disclosed) says, taking a break from watching his fellow drivers play cards by the side of the dust-carpeted road near Chiriamore.
Written on it are the name and mobile phone number of a sergeant.
Calcutta’s police may find it hard to distinguish between two and four-stroke autorickshaws but it’s not they can’t deliver a stroke of genius or two.
The glimpses you catch of policemen collecting — or bending down to pick up from the road — a coin or two from passing truckers in barely hidden little actions in the pale yellow light of the Calcutta night are just what they are. Glimpses.
Beyond those glimpses, and beyond your eyes, play the big boys — and they don’t play at night. Because the big money moves in daytime, when the city is tied down by prohibitions, a no-entry island for the big wheels of commerce.
Where passports can be bought under fake names to get out of the country, what’s a pass to roll into a no-entry zone in a city?
Ask Yadav. “I have six cards (slips of paper called cards by the drivers) to enter no-entry zones like Sealdah, Jorabagan, Shyambazar, Posta, Esplanade and Tollygunge.”
For unhindered movement from the northern end of the city to the southern tip, a truck driver would need a card for each of the city’s 14 traffic guards. Some drivers say if you have the contacts, you can buy one issued by the headquarters, which costs more but works across the city. But there is no confirmation.
The thought may not have occurred to the administration, but the city’s enterprising police force has developed a system that resembles what in other cities is called congestion charge. In cities like Singapore and London, cars can enter certain zones only if they pay a congestion charge to the administration.
In Calcutta, a clandestine congestion charge is being collected from goods vehicles by individual policemen to be shared within the force.
The city is carved into 14 traffic guard zones. For instance, the region from Dunlop to the Khanna crossing is the empire of the Shyambazar traffic guard. Which means if a driver or owner buys a card of the Shyambazar traffic guard, the vehicle has the passport for free movement across this span.
Each month, a truck owner or driver pays a fixed amount, decided according to the size of the vehicle (Rs 600 a month for a heavy truck, Rs 200 for a light and Rs 150 for a three-wheeled carrier), to a particular sergeant of the traffic guard who hands him the passport to enter, move into and exit no-entry zones anytime without being caught and penalised. Every new member has to pay two months’ charges in advance.
If someone bars the way, flash the passport with the sergeant’s name and phone number or, if the sergeant is too careful, just the phone number. But if you miss payment — each card has to be renewed every month — you get a ticket or worse.
“This is much easier as we don’t have to pay anything on the road. We can just show our cards and get away,” says Singh (first name not revealed), piloting a Matador with three cards in his possession.
An official of one of the city’s traffic guards says the card system has institutionalised bribery on the roads. What he means is that it has systematised the long-established institution of bribery.
Technology has helped, in the shape of the ubiquitous mobile phone that has individualised the method of establishing contact, taking it out of the official channel embodied in the phone on the desk with a number that can easily be traced to the police. Its 10 digits also act as the passport number on the slips of paper issued by the sergeants.
But it’s not as if organised bribery has killed the tradition of drop-a-coin-into-my-palm.
Two constables on duty at Chiriamore walk onto the middle of the road, forcing a truck to screech to a halt. The helper sprinkles some coins at the cops and the truck speeds off.
“Dada lekha likhi korben na (Please don’t write). We take it in our palms, officers of the traffic guard take it in envelopes while the bosses receive it in their drawers,” said one of the constables.
The driver admits: “Now we pay Rs 10 occasionally to constables when we pass through no-entry zones, (but) the card system has made money collection easier for the cops, too.”
A sergeant, standing at the Chiriamore crossing beside his red Enfield, says the traffic guards encourage membership — subscribe to the club and enjoy a trouble-free ride. No one will ask for your licence, no one will want to check your registration papers, no one will fine you for traffic violation, no one will object to overloading.
Owners and drivers are aware it’s foolish to expose themselves to avoidable harassment by not becoming a member.
A constable said: “We have little power … whenever we try to book an offending vehicle, they produce a card and abuse us for stopping them in busy hours and even threaten to complain about us to the sergeants.”
That is not to say constables are outside the system. They get a cut for acting as the liaison between the truck owner/driver and the sergeant.
“Give us your cellphone number and vehicle number and once the sergeant comes we will contact you. We don’t have the authority to issue cards,” said a constable in the Shyambazar traffic guard area.
Although theoretically a sergeant can issue any number of passes — in other words, control any number of vehicles — the number swings between 100 and 300. Two of the big names in a traffic guard in the north handle anywhere between 300 and 500 vehicles, some on behalf of their boss.
The boss doesn’t deal with the owners or drivers — he’s always at one remove, at least. Owners or drivers either pass the money on to the sergeant directly or through agents and touts. The money collected is distributed within the traffic guard.
By a conservative estimate, each sergeant — one of the traffic guards in the north, for instance, has about a dozen sergeants — collects about Rs 40,000 (assuming he handles 200 vehicles at an average rate of Rs 200) a month.
Thirtyish and clad in a white full-sleeve shirt and black trousers, Singh waits at the wheel of his Matador that is to be loaded with cement.
“We enter the no-entry zone with confidence as no sergeant would even dare book us,” he says.
Kajra re, kajra re tere kare kare naina, plays his FM.
Written on it are the name and mobile phone number of a sergeant.
Calcutta’s police may find it hard to distinguish between two and four-stroke autorickshaws but it’s not they can’t deliver a stroke of genius or two.
The glimpses you catch of policemen collecting — or bending down to pick up from the road — a coin or two from passing truckers in barely hidden little actions in the pale yellow light of the Calcutta night are just what they are. Glimpses.
Beyond those glimpses, and beyond your eyes, play the big boys — and they don’t play at night. Because the big money moves in daytime, when the city is tied down by prohibitions, a no-entry island for the big wheels of commerce.
Where passports can be bought under fake names to get out of the country, what’s a pass to roll into a no-entry zone in a city?
Ask Yadav. “I have six cards (slips of paper called cards by the drivers) to enter no-entry zones like Sealdah, Jorabagan, Shyambazar, Posta, Esplanade and Tollygunge.”
For unhindered movement from the northern end of the city to the southern tip, a truck driver would need a card for each of the city’s 14 traffic guards. Some drivers say if you have the contacts, you can buy one issued by the headquarters, which costs more but works across the city. But there is no confirmation.
The thought may not have occurred to the administration, but the city’s enterprising police force has developed a system that resembles what in other cities is called congestion charge. In cities like Singapore and London, cars can enter certain zones only if they pay a congestion charge to the administration.
In Calcutta, a clandestine congestion charge is being collected from goods vehicles by individual policemen to be shared within the force.
The city is carved into 14 traffic guard zones. For instance, the region from Dunlop to the Khanna crossing is the empire of the Shyambazar traffic guard. Which means if a driver or owner buys a card of the Shyambazar traffic guard, the vehicle has the passport for free movement across this span.
Each month, a truck owner or driver pays a fixed amount, decided according to the size of the vehicle (Rs 600 a month for a heavy truck, Rs 200 for a light and Rs 150 for a three-wheeled carrier), to a particular sergeant of the traffic guard who hands him the passport to enter, move into and exit no-entry zones anytime without being caught and penalised. Every new member has to pay two months’ charges in advance.
If someone bars the way, flash the passport with the sergeant’s name and phone number or, if the sergeant is too careful, just the phone number. But if you miss payment — each card has to be renewed every month — you get a ticket or worse.
“This is much easier as we don’t have to pay anything on the road. We can just show our cards and get away,” says Singh (first name not revealed), piloting a Matador with three cards in his possession.
An official of one of the city’s traffic guards says the card system has institutionalised bribery on the roads. What he means is that it has systematised the long-established institution of bribery.
Technology has helped, in the shape of the ubiquitous mobile phone that has individualised the method of establishing contact, taking it out of the official channel embodied in the phone on the desk with a number that can easily be traced to the police. Its 10 digits also act as the passport number on the slips of paper issued by the sergeants.
But it’s not as if organised bribery has killed the tradition of drop-a-coin-into-my-palm.
Two constables on duty at Chiriamore walk onto the middle of the road, forcing a truck to screech to a halt. The helper sprinkles some coins at the cops and the truck speeds off.
“Dada lekha likhi korben na (Please don’t write). We take it in our palms, officers of the traffic guard take it in envelopes while the bosses receive it in their drawers,” said one of the constables.
The driver admits: “Now we pay Rs 10 occasionally to constables when we pass through no-entry zones, (but) the card system has made money collection easier for the cops, too.”
A sergeant, standing at the Chiriamore crossing beside his red Enfield, says the traffic guards encourage membership — subscribe to the club and enjoy a trouble-free ride. No one will ask for your licence, no one will want to check your registration papers, no one will fine you for traffic violation, no one will object to overloading.
Owners and drivers are aware it’s foolish to expose themselves to avoidable harassment by not becoming a member.
A constable said: “We have little power … whenever we try to book an offending vehicle, they produce a card and abuse us for stopping them in busy hours and even threaten to complain about us to the sergeants.”
That is not to say constables are outside the system. They get a cut for acting as the liaison between the truck owner/driver and the sergeant.
“Give us your cellphone number and vehicle number and once the sergeant comes we will contact you. We don’t have the authority to issue cards,” said a constable in the Shyambazar traffic guard area.
Although theoretically a sergeant can issue any number of passes — in other words, control any number of vehicles — the number swings between 100 and 300. Two of the big names in a traffic guard in the north handle anywhere between 300 and 500 vehicles, some on behalf of their boss.
The boss doesn’t deal with the owners or drivers — he’s always at one remove, at least. Owners or drivers either pass the money on to the sergeant directly or through agents and touts. The money collected is distributed within the traffic guard.
By a conservative estimate, each sergeant — one of the traffic guards in the north, for instance, has about a dozen sergeants — collects about Rs 40,000 (assuming he handles 200 vehicles at an average rate of Rs 200) a month.
Thirtyish and clad in a white full-sleeve shirt and black trousers, Singh waits at the wheel of his Matador that is to be loaded with cement.
“We enter the no-entry zone with confidence as no sergeant would even dare book us,” he says.
Kajra re, kajra re tere kare kare naina, plays his FM.
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