DNA / Rahul Roushan / Saturday, December 1, 2012 9:00 IST
Corrupt officials, leaders, businessmen, and criminals from 51 districts of India met here early today to devise plans to loot the cash that would be transferred to the poor as part of the newly announced Direct Cash Transfer scheme of the government.
"A government scheme without any fraud is like a computer without virus," said a government official willing to work on the project to digitize the Aadhar database.
"If your computer never had any virus problems, you had a sad and boring life," he claimed.
The meeting was called in after these people were offended by some claims that suggested that the latest welfare schemes could minimize corruption by directly transferring cash to the intended beneficiary’s account, thus doing away with the intermediaries who might pocket a share.
"We took it personally and as a challenge to our abilities to scam and loot," another official said. "The country will come to a grinding halt if honest officers are found more organised and alert than the corrupt ones!"
The criminals attending the meeting proposed that they would simply rob off the guys coming out of banks after withdrawing the cash, but they were asked to wait till the other members found a better way to loot the citizens of the country.
"That’s the easiest thing to do," the leaders and officials told the criminals attending the meeting, "But let us first apply our minds and try to figure out how to run away with this cash without overt criminality."
"It will help us to confuse people if we get caught," a leader explained to the criminals.
With the criminals’ plan kept as back up, the businessmen proposed to start a company in the villages that will offer to manage the cash received by the poor men and women.
"We will promise to increase their cash by over 10 times in a year, and ask them to deposit the cash in our Ponzi schemes after withdrawing them from their accounts," a businessman suggested. "We have fooled educated people in the urban India, so fooling these village folks shouldn’t be a problem at all," the businessman added.
This idea to loot the cash subsidy through Ponzi scheme was well received, but some leaders thought that this plan was risky.
"Some journalists and activists might track how the poor were using the cash subsidies. They fear that men in the poor families will fritter these cash subsidies away on liquor and gambling," a leader pointed out. "These guys might come to know about our Ponzi scheme and may expose them."
At this point of time, the criminals again offered to loot the poor people at gun point, but they were asked by the leaders and the officials to be patient.
"Look, we can do what was done in the MCD ghost employees case," an official proposed. "We can have Aadhar cards issued to imaginary poor people and get cash transferred in those accounts, just like MCD was fooled into transferring salaries to imaginary employees," the official added.
"We already have instances of Aadhar cards being issued to a coriander plant, so getting them issued to an imaginary human being shouldn’t be a problem," the official pointed out.
Sources say that this suggestion was appreciated by everyone in the meeting and they agreed to meet next week with a detailed plan of the loot.
Rahul Roushan thinks he can make some sense through nonsense. He attempts the same through his news satire website www.fakingnews.com
