License Please!

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Napoleon is reputed to have said a mouthful:

"An army marches on its belly"

Fine. But a Government doesn't march, no way. It is supposed to be 'run', but most of them 'squat' on their subjects in an uncouth way. It doesn't matter whether it is democratic, autocratic, plutocratic or ahem kleptocratic. They are all the same. They try to squeeze every drop of juice from their unfortunate lemons.

Let us take the Gold Rush State of California, often touted as the ultimate heaven to starry-eyed Indians like me. Typically a KGPian, after much stress and strife, lands a job there, rents a studio apartment, saves some nickels, finds a girl willing to marry him and settle down, and walks to the Registrar of Marriages. You would expect that She would clap and be delighted that the couple is doing an enormous favor to the community with their combined input of software, hardware or finance expertise and would in due course bring forth more profitable versions. And that She would write a check for a grand and ask them to go forth and have a blast.

But what really happens? They are slapped anything up to $100 of scarce money as license fees!!!

Governments all over and all along would like to tax any thing and everything they see. Ben Frank or someone equally bright said that nothing is certain in this world except death and taxes.

Why, our own Mughal Emperor taxed long hair on the crowns of infidels and called it by the fancy name of zizia.

And the more sagacious Brits taxed the salt of our seas; and came a cropper when Gandhijee marched to Dandi with his army on their dandas.

When I was a kid of 8, I was once visiting my Literary Uncle's place in Nellore. He was then working as a youthful clerk in the Post Office, a job that I always craved. In those days, there were no scooters or motor bikes. When a Royal Enfield Bullet of a Madrasi dandy passes by, everyone in the town would stop whatever they were doing and gape.

After saving for over a year, my Uncle bought a second hand push bike and was riding it to his Office that day as I watched him mount his bike with gaping admiration and envy.

Within minutes he rushed home and frantically concealed his bike in the backyard and tried to pretend he never saw a bike in his life.

I gathered later that the Nellore Municipality issued licenses to be renewed annually to all the roadworthy push bikes in the town and that day there was this spot check by the police who stopped every bike plying on its arterial Grand Trunk Road and heaved the defaulting bikes on to a truck. The license used to come in the shape of a metallic token with a numeric ID fitted to the frame behind the seat.

Can you beat it?

The practice stopped when the Rayleigh Company became a Sen-Rayleigh affair and produced so many bikes at an affordable price that it became impractical, impossible and unprofitable to go about issuing licenses, renewing and checking them. In their heart of hearts they would be happy if all their honest citizens (unlike my Uncle) came every year on their own to the Municipal Office, queued up for hours and put their cash in a piggy box which could be opened by the charwoman every evening and handed over to her Lord without pocketing a penny or two. But human nature being what it is, they scrapped the whole business. My Uncle must still be having that memento of a metal disk in his vault...he is a fond collector of odds and ends.

When I joined IIT KGP and bought my own third hand push bike and was riding nonchalantly to the Gole Bazaar, I was stopped by a cop and ordered to 'fall out'. I was surprised since I was told there is no licensing of push bikes in Bengal.

But I was told by the cop that a brand new rule has been introduced that week that every push bike should be equipped with a 'head light'. I asked him how. He said there were many options...attach a dynamo kit to the rear wheel and a torch light bulb to the handle bar, or, have a kerosene kit available in Gole Bazaar. He didn't say it but he would have unwillingly let me go if I could equip my forehead with Sir Humphry Davy's Miner's Lamp.

He let me go with a warning. I bought one kit from Gole Bazaar and attached it to my bike. Needless to say, it got stolen the third day and I stopped going to Gole Bazaar till they blew 'all clear' after finding it impossible, impractical and unprofitable.

Then I saved some pennies and bought a first hand Murphy Radio in Gole Bazaar. They gave me what I thought delightfully was a pass book along with it. I was told it is the Radio License Book. Apparently I had to go to the Post Office by the Railway Station every January, stand in a queue and pay the license fees and get it stamped in the pass book.

I never went since the radio never worked...it just about creaked. But I was told that the defaulters will be 'checked' at their residence and penalized heavily and the radio set confiscated, unless I get a certificate from them that the kit had stopped working irreparably and 'condemned' officially.

However, nothing drastic happened because by then the market was flooded with 'transistor' pocket kits....

And then they latched on to B-W TVs...

As I said, every Government worth its salt would tax you till it becomes impractical, impossible and unprofitable.

Marriage???

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