If you don’t cheat, society will treat you as an imbecile who never grew up.
When an Indian child is growing up, her parents ask her at some point: "Beta, which one is your favourite scam?" The kind of scam you like reveals a personality type—a guide to the future, indispensable to worried parents. My answer as a schoolboy was unwavering: "Mummy, fodder scam."
Scams are generational. Those who are born about now will ten years later have their own favourites: Rotomac, NiMo and others that will show up in the time to come.
We Indians are born fraudsters and hustlers. The big guns obviously hunt bigger game. The returns are higher. Every Indian cheats to the best of his/her ability. You do the best you can. It’s what school taught us.
To learn to cheat in India is to learn how to survive. If you don’t, society will treat you as an imbecile who never grew up. Like the freelance writer.
The working principle is this: If you don’t exploit, then you will automatically become the exploited. What happens then is that since everyone is cheating everybody else, all this cheating cancels each other out in the final sum. No one really gains. But it’s something we are habituated and genetically inclined to do, like the way we drive. It’s a mix of nature and culture.
The shopkeeper wakes up and ups his shutters. The spider waits for the fly to come flying in. It could be the smallest of shopkeepers. It’s the reason people don’t change neighbourhoods, although familiarity is no guarantee that you will not be cheated. There is a cold bloodedness to our human relationships: false obsequiousness always follows a successful heist. The cheater respects the cheated’s stupidity. Without that he will be nothing.
More at https://tinyurI.com/ed6iu4mh
When an Indian child is growing up, her parents ask her at some point: "Beta, which one is your favourite scam?" The kind of scam you like reveals a personality type—a guide to the future, indispensable to worried parents. My answer as a schoolboy was unwavering: "Mummy, fodder scam."
Scams are generational. Those who are born about now will ten years later have their own favourites: Rotomac, NiMo and others that will show up in the time to come.
We Indians are born fraudsters and hustlers. The big guns obviously hunt bigger game. The returns are higher. Every Indian cheats to the best of his/her ability. You do the best you can. It’s what school taught us.
To learn to cheat in India is to learn how to survive. If you don’t, society will treat you as an imbecile who never grew up. Like the freelance writer.
The working principle is this: If you don’t exploit, then you will automatically become the exploited. What happens then is that since everyone is cheating everybody else, all this cheating cancels each other out in the final sum. No one really gains. But it’s something we are habituated and genetically inclined to do, like the way we drive. It’s a mix of nature and culture.
The shopkeeper wakes up and ups his shutters. The spider waits for the fly to come flying in. It could be the smallest of shopkeepers. It’s the reason people don’t change neighbourhoods, although familiarity is no guarantee that you will not be cheated. There is a cold bloodedness to our human relationships: false obsequiousness always follows a successful heist. The cheater respects the cheated’s stupidity. Without that he will be nothing.
More at https://tinyurI.com/ed6iu4mh
