“It seems that nature has at man’s birth fixed the bounds of his virtues and vices.”
—François de La Rochefoucauld
The idle monologue of an unconvinced surveyor.
Certain countries have taken the fight against corruption quite seriously. Jagat Ram, a mid-level official at the Delhi Jal Board (the water commission of Delhi), is amongst those who are directly affected.
Bengal’s Derrida, Sukanta Sarkar (alias: Sukantada), who had once suggested minor textual changes to William Blake’s Marriage of Heaven and Hell, had this to say about corruption:
“In certain societies corruption not only should be tolerated but actively encouraged. Corruption is the only viable weapon to fight against unfair rules.”
“More often small people are hauled up on corruption charges while Qatar gets to hold the World Cup, the West continues arming aggressive and unfair nations, and the Iraq War happens despite the whole city of London coming out in protest.”
December, 2008. It was the year India had enforced a ban on smoking in public places. I was waiting for my train to Delhi at Calcutta’s Howrah station.
Unmindfully, I lit up a cigarette in the open-air section of the platform. Halfway through smoking, a railway guard passed by, stopped, retraced his steps, and stood before me.
“Eta ki Hochhey?” Inaccurately translated: “What is this thing that is happening?”
Just then I remembered the government rule, flicked off the cigarette into the tracks, and apologized. As often happens to men with authority, the guard took this as an opportunity to give me a life lesson.
“ ... aar apnara tho educated!” (Translated: “And that too from people like you, who claim to be educated!”)
Banal displays of power are common among visa officers, bureaucrats at the Ministry of Home Affairs, traffic policemen, clerks at government offices, gas agency guys, guards posted by the Archaeological Survey of India, doctors, landlords, staff at the immigration desk, and librarians. One learns from living in India that the best way to tackle such situations is to quietly listen to the person, not make any eye contact, and nod in agreement. Same way as one deals with a headmaster. Never challenge the status quo. But this man was drunk on authority. Unsatisfied by mere naming and shaming, he wanted to hand me over to the station authorities. He wanted me to pay the penalty and get a further bollocking. No problems with that, except I had a train to catch, for which I had reserved a seat one month in advance using sports quota.
So I drew the wicked little man to one corner and requested he settle the matter right there.
“I am sure the railway authorities have other very important matters to attend to,” I reasoned with him.
“Citizen to citizen.
Here’s 500 rupees for Diwali sweets. Donation for the community Saraswati puja.
Eid?
One North Calcuttan to another. Oh! You are from Raniganj, I had a cousin who was once posted there. You want me to be punished, no? Here it is, my hard-earned money. I am unemployed.
Let’s adjust.”
But the man was unmoved.
“Look, my train will leave soon. I will miss the job interview.
My father is a retired government servant.
Are you a supporter of Mohun Bagan
or East Bengal?”
Finally he relented, took the 500-rupee note from me, and left. Phew.
The train was fifteen minutes late. I quashed an impulse to light another cigarette. The December light fell on the tracks, softening the filth. A line of clothes belonging to the platform dwellers swayed in the gentle breeze. Two kids played grab-genitals dangerously close to the tracks. A tea seller made brisk business. Anxious travelers dipped biscuits in their cups.
A few minutes later the guard returned. What now? Wasn’t 500 rupees enough? Could he have changed his mind and wanted to hand me over to the station authorities after all? But I too can say that he took a bribe from me. But he can deny it. Oh no, I don’t have proof. Bribes don’t come with receipts.
The guard smiled at me and handed me a 200-rupee note.
“I think you have given me too much. Three hundred should be enough.”
There is nobility in corruption, although it is difficult to convince the template intellectuals.
François de La Rochefoucauld again:
“We do not despise all who have vices, but we do despise all who have not virtues.”
×
The Social Commons: Citizens in the Shade, Aliens in the Sun
What whispered confidences and secrets may citizen and alien trade as they make their moves? What new things may be afoot in their wake? In 1762, when Jean-Jacques Rousseau added a conditional “but” after the phrase “man is born free” in The Social Contract, was he implying that there could be hidden costs to birth in the human species?
Cuba: The Fading of a Subcontinental Dream
As the revolution and its leaders enter their twilight years, what are the most relevant expressions of transition? How are the relations between the state and culture being reconfigured? Will the polemical and politically volatile divide between culture deemed to be inside or outside the revolution give way to more heterogeneous panorama?
Closing Editorial
A Knot Untied in Two Parts
Notes on the Abstract Strike
The Corruption of the Eye: On Photogenesis and Self-Growing Images
The Vectoralist Class
Mercury Retrograde
Surface Encounters
Soaking in the Daily Curses: A Conversation
Made to Fit, or The Gathering of the Balloons
Uncommoning Nature
Self-Identity is a Bad Visual System
Of Work Riots, Political Prisoners, and Workers Refusing to Leave the Factory—Translated Through the Pages of Faridabad Workers News (2005–2015)
Laboring One to Seven (Island of Terror)
Eating Glass: The New Propaganda
The Extraordinary Adventures of Guy Fawkes
Sharing Instinct: An Annotation of the Social Contract Through Shadow Libraries
Reading Art as Confrontation
Blackout City
A Few Notes from an Extellectual
Traitors, a Mutable Lexicon
It Takes so Much for a City to Happen
Less World to be Ourselves: A Note on Postapocalyptic Simplification
Give Back to Your Alma Mater!
Our Affirmations
The Revolution Is Dead—But Long Lives the State!
Extinction as Usual?: Geo-Social Futures and Left Optimism
Heart of Brightness
Supercritical Decay
THE COMMUNIST REVOLUTION WAS CAUSED BY THE SUN: A PARTIAL SCRIPT FOR A SHORT FILM
TBH IDK FTW
You Can’t Ask Everyone to Behave Ethically Just Like That
The Arts for the Global Conflict: A 2115 Report
The Alchemic Digital, The Planetary Elemental
Castroneirics: A Dreamitaph for Fidel (The Exquisite Cadaver)
The Memory of a Deluge and the Surface of Water
Plastic Shine: From Prosaic Miracle to Retrograde Sublime
The Museum, Its Meaning and Mission
The Forms of Non-Belonging
The Message of Francis
Crimes Without a Scene: Qian Weikang and the New Measurement Group
Why Preserve the Name “Human”?
Empire and Its Double: The Many Pavilions of the Islamic State
Theorizing Deposition: Transitional Stratigraphy, Disruptive Layers, and the Future
Is There Any World to Come?
The Loop
After Nihilism, After Technic: Sketches for a New Philosophical Architecture
Do You See It? Well, It Doesn’t See You!
The Fruitarian Dilemma: A Dialogue about Kissing Ass, Corruption, and Compromise
Theorems of Life (As an Addendum and Clarification on Monism)
The Idle Monologue of an Unconvinced Surveyor
ISIS and the CIA Vie for the Claim to Divinity
On Direct Action: An Address to Cultural Workers
Field Guide to Skirmology: Handbook for the Skirmonaut
Arsenic Dreams
Provincialism Perfected: Global Contemporary Art and Uneven Development
Weapons Grade Pig Work
Botched Enlightenment: A Conversation
Immortality Day
Oh the Animals of Language
ARGUS is: An Almost Cock and Bull Story
Why We Look at Plants, in a Corrupted World
The Making of Americans
Styles and Customs in the 2020s
The Changing of the Gods of Reason: Cecil John Rhodes, Karoo Fracking, and the Decolonizing of the Anthropocene
Child as Material
La Ville Souvenir
On Solar Databases and the Exogenesis of Light
Men of Bronze, Homes of Concrete
Art After the Machines
Nomos and Cosmos
GORILLAZ GRRLZ
Torn Together
Online Digital Artwork and the Status of the “Based-In” Artist
Second Advents: On the Issue of Planning in Contemporary Art
Look Above, the Sky is Falling: Humanity Before and After the End of the World
Shiny
Windjarrameru, The Stealing C*nts
On Deprofessionalizing Surgery
Things Based on Real-Life Events
Thinking About Art Thinking
Construction with Steel and Technology
Apocalypsis, or The Dragon in Her Cave
Turk, Toaster, Task Rabbit
On the Documentary
Cosmic Anxiety: The Russian Case
The Great Silence
The Art of Cooking: A Dialogue Between Julia Child and Craig Claiborne
SUPERCOMMUNITY (editorial)
e-flux conversations is a discussion platform for e-flux readers. Click to start a discussion of the article above.
- Conversations
- Share
- Download PDF