The Rediff Special/Syed Firdaus Ashraf

Pay Up -- Or Else!

Every day, for eight months now, officials at the anti-extortion cell set up by the Bombay police receive at least one complaint.

Almost every single complaint comes from hotel owners, builders and small businessmen -- and relate to calls received from gangsters, demanding protection money and threatening loss of life and property if the victim refuses to pay up.

The racket -- which, officials say, is on a boom -- involves Rs 150 million a year. Unofficial figures put the stakes much higher -- at Rs 10 billion annually.

And, warn sources, this is based on officially received complaints. The feeling among police circles is that for every person who complains, at least two pay up without notifying the authorities. So the official figures could, it is felt, be merely the tip of a very large iceberg.

And it's not just the big dons, the Dawood Ibrahims and Arun Gawlis and Chotta Rajans, who are involved. Says senior police inspector and head of the anti-extortion cell A V Kamath, "Today even the smaller gangs have hit on extortion as a means to make a quick buck. And these smaller gangs are, in fact the ones who thrive on extortion, while the bigger gangs concentrate on drugs and other activities."

The prime cause? A quantum leap in population and, therefore, in the numbers of unemployed young men who provide the ganglords a steady source of manpower. Says Charan Singh Azad, former joint commissioner of police (law & order), and now head of the state Home Guards, "Unemployment is the single biggest reason for this, in my opinion. In my tenure in the police I came across at least 1,000 educated young men who had got involved in crime simply because they had no other means of earning a livelihood."

True enough, if you go by employment exchange figures -- 700,000 young men on the register in the last six years alone.

Some don't even bother to register. Because the perception is that it is a fruitless exercise anyway. Ask Sampat Kallappa Mohite, who, in the five years that he has been on the exchange rolls, is still to get a call letter for a job. "For five years, I come here, to the employment exchange, once a week, stand in queue for several hours, and go back disappointed."

The government does not seem to have recognised the real dimensions of the problem -- but gangsters sure have. Thus, some have begun recruiting from the ranks of the unemployed, while Gawli goes one better and assures himself of their loyalty by putting in place a scheme for getting them employment.

Before his arrest, Gawli had distrubuted 10,000 employment forms to educated young men, and actually placed hundred of the respondents in secure employment.

Contrast this with official initiatives. The Shiv Udyog Sena, headed by Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray's nephew Raj Thackeray, is ostensibly committed to providing jobs to 2.7 million unemployed youth. The Michael Jackson extravaganza of a year ago was supposed to generate money for the scheme. However, in the two-and-a-half years of the Sena's joint rule with the Bharatiya Janata Party, nothing concrete has come of this.

It's no wonder then that even those who are not too impressed with the official employment machinery, like Mohite, see salvation in the underworld. "I too have registered my name at the Akhil Bhartiya Sena (Gawli's party) office," says Mohite. "I have heard that 'Daddy' (which is how Gawli is known to the faithful) offers jobs to people. And I hope to get a job."

"There is a big change in the attitude of youngsters," says former state director general of police D S Soman. "They are turning to the gangsters, they feel they are the ones who can save society, and that explains why people like Gawli are gaining ground in Bombay. This being the case, gangsters will never feel the shortage of manpower. And this in turn will breed more and more gangsters."

Ironically, says Soman, Gawli himself is the best exemplar of the phenomenon. "He tried hard to get a job in Godrej, then in Crompton. He was turned down, and switched to making money through smalltime extortion -- and now see how he has grown!"

Which explains one part of the phenomenon -- but why has extortion become the preferred business for the underworld?

"Because it's the easiest way to make money," says Kamath. "You make a phone call and then sit back and collect, no hassles. Unlike drugs and other activities, there is no investment to make, no complicated arrangements to worry about. And the average small businessman would rather shell out Rs 100,000 or so than live in fear of their lives -- and Bombay is full of small businessmen."

Joint Commissioner of Police (crime) R S Sharma, however, is not prepared to put the entire discredit at the door of the "unemployment factor". "There is also the materialistic values that have crept into society today -- I mean, I know that one of my police constables turned into a goonda because he thought that was an easier way of earning money. Values are non-existent, these days."

Interestingly, the whole phenomenon dates way back to the 1970s -- the construction boom and the subsequent Rent Control Act being the real triggers. The builders lobby began using strongarm tactics -- mostly hiring muscle from the ganglords -- to clear slums in order to put up pucca buildings. And in the process, created a monster that is now turning right round on them.

The other reason for the emergence, and current strangelhold, of the underworld is the fact that they are faster at solving problems than the official machinery. It was their ability to sort out problems immediately, without the bother of court and police formalities, that made the likes of Varadaraja Mudaliar assume the mantle of saviours of the people -- and even today, the same thinking prevails.

Then again, there are some who agree with this logic, who trace the rise of extortion to the Shiv Sena. And not surprisingly, former muncipal counsellor Rustom Tirandaz, a Sena-baiter of long-standing, is foremost among them. "The whole extortion business started with the rise of Shiv Sena, that part was born out of the extortion racket," says Tirandaz. "What the gangsters are doing today, the Sena did in the sixties. And even today, the local shakhas set themselves up as problem-solving centres for the people, so why point fingers only at the gangsters like Gawli, who are doing the same thing?"

Unemployment as a reason? Forget it, says Tirandaz. ""Unemployment was there even earlier. The real problem is that society has changed, values have changed, today people respect the gangsters more than they do the politicians."

So just what are the official doing about this? Nothing much -- and of course they have their own reasons. "It is sad," says a police inspector attached to the extortion cell, "that for a population of 12 million, there are only 38,000 policemen to enforce law and order. So just how effective can we be?

Meanwhile, the phone rings. Another small time businessman, with the same problem as so many of his ilk... another case for the files...

Tell us what you think of this feature