I feel so inferior these days.

Demonetization - It made me feel so poor, so inferior these days. I am a central government employee with my salary as the sole source of income. Every year I pay tax which pinches my pocket dearly, still I had a sense of satisfaction I was honestly paying more taxes than many of my more affluent friends who earn from other sources. They manipulate the records to pay much lower taxes than me. But damn Modi. My superiority complex is now threatened. Why on earth did he have to take such a drastic step? The status quo would have been better. We Indians are programmed for status quo. We resist changes and we love to see things stagnant. So, whenever there is a change of any sort we protest. We don’t want better emission norms because that would mean our old cars need to be changed. We don’t want changes in the education system, for those yellow notes that have been preserved over the ages will be trashed. And how can these be trashed, after all these are a part of our heritage. Actually Indians have been looted by the Mughals and the British for the past thousand years and in these thousand years of evolution, we have been genetically programmed to be dishonest. We like to accumulate whatever we can, even if it is scrap thinking that it might be of some use at some unexpected turn of event. That’s why we preserve the packaging for our TV, refrigerator or washing machine. We are always certain that nothing is permanent, neither our job nor our home, and so we like to remain alert. Maybe the psychology of being at the receiving end of the atrocities by the Mughals and the British is the reason for that. Similarly cheating on taxes is also programmed into our thinking. We have been brought up on stories of taxes, ”lagaan, jiziya  and khazna.” The songs of revolts always had this undertone of taxes being unduly charged. Even the lullaby that my mom sang had a line, "...khazna debo kishe (with what will I pay the taxes)." When India became independent, it adopted a socialist model where agricultural income became free from taxes. But India forgot that the taxes were collected for the British by the Indians and those Indians used to get a cut out of the plunder. So in the process of gaining independence, these Indians needed to find ways to keep their palms greased. And so corruption in the form of bribery and commission became accepted ways of life. It was so very accepted that we don’t classify people as honest and corrupt, bur as least corrupt among the corrupt. This corruption spread out ion every sphere of life. A few marks more in the school and college, a few bucks more by cheating others, a few more seconds by overtaking others wrongly, a few inches of land grabbed by putting a slab over a drain. We pay bribes so diligently for vehicle related purposes. A truck driver shaking hands with the security personal doesn’t make us wink, though the cost of the goods that truck carries is indirectly increased by the cumulative impact of these bribes. We hear of reports that doctors, lawyers and even judges default with their income tax. And yet we pay in cash to the nursing homes to save 15% of service tax. We pay builders a part in black so that we have to pay lesser government duty and then we again show lesser area of the land/property purchased, so much so that if we go by land records the map of India would be shrunk by 25%.  Every Indian loves to take a morally high position on every issue, but reacts violently when he is questioned. So in this demonetized economy I have to blame Modi and only Modi for making me feel inferior.