The PNB fraud has left many of us feeling cheated although no money has gone out of our pockets directly. We feel cheated because the rich and the well-connected once again appear to have managed to get away after stealing a large amount of money. The pictures of smug high lifers seem to be mocking those who play by the rules.
We feel cheated because we are made to feel like criminals when we intersect with the financial sector—each of us, every few years, has to redo our KYC details. The linking of Aadhaar to various services has now reached a level where a corporate chemist chain is sending texts to customers to link Aadhaar to the account. When we seek a loan, the due diligence process is exhausting; the contracts are not really two people agreeing, it is the weaker party (us) just signing what the stronger party (bank) shoves across the table. Miss one EMI or get behind your credit card payment and the hounding begins relentlessly. A friend’s sister is a senior bank manager in a state-run bank in a small town in middle India. A part of her territory is also the nearby rural clusters and some of her work is loan recovery. As details of the Nirav Modi theft emerged, her sense of disbelief grew. She said that when sometimes people defaulted on loans, she has actually threatened to walk off with a cow or a goat as collateral to make good the bank’s loss. For the poor people, who will surely be even less able to pay their debt with their asset gone, the loss would be mind numbing. But the rich get away with it because of political patronage, collusion and greed. Fraud of this kind corrodes the overall value system of a nation when people feel justified in cheating and not paying taxes.