Sunday, February 25, 2001		Article

COLONEL Bill was drafted for service in the Indian Army during the British rule. He was pensioned off and he returned to England before India got Independence.

He was not an inoxerable Tory like Winston Churchill who had declined to ‘preside over the liquidation of the British Empire’. He was liberal and in favour of not only India but all countries and colonies under alien subjugation whether of Britain, France or Portugal or others being freed.

Col Bill used to read with interest the marvellous progress that this country had made in the short span of five decades of attaining freedom: The construction of big dams with thousands of kilometres of canals and scores of power houses, huge steel plants, a network of road, bridges, universities and colleges and so on. He cherished the memory of 20 happy years he had lived in this country. He was pleased at the strides India was taking in all-round development and wished he could visit India again and see all that for himself, if an opportunity came.

His desire was fulfiled one day. His present employers in England assigned him a special duty: to visit India and study the prospects of marketing their products.

Col Bill’s first surprise came at the Delhi airport soon after he landed. The customs official, after a thorough check of his baggage, as if he was making a search for larceny, made a tentative list of assessable articles, almost all of which were only samples of the things his concern manufactured and assessed a colossal amount of Rs 4600 as duty. Col Bill was making some mental calculations when the official was good enough to whisper, his lips to Bill’s ear, "I can let you off Mr Bill if you are prepared to part with one of the two small cameras you have got". These had cost him £25 a piece. Quite a cheap bargain, he thought.

In connection with his assignment, Col Bill had to consult his principals in London. Even after waiting for hours there was no knowing when the telephone call was likely to mature. At last he requested the receptionist of the hotel where he was putting up, if he could do something about it.

"Why didn’t you tell me before, Sahib?", he heard the clerk saying. "What are we here for? To serve our guests to the best of our ability". He assured the colonel that he would manage to put through the call within half hour at the most and Col Bill could carry on the conversation for as long as he pleased. "You’ll have to pay rs fifty as Inam to the telephone operator, Sahib, and only a tenner for my services. That’s all. No botheration of paying the international trunk call bill or anything of the sort", he added. Not a bad proposition again.

According to his itinerary, after a week’s stay in the Capital, Col Bill was to go to Bombay — India’s first city, world’s fifth largest metropolis and country’s biggest import and export centre and industrial complex. Unluckily, due to Indian Airlines strike all domestic flights were cancelled.

Perforce he had to travel by train. But the position here was worse still. The reservation clerk said that all first class and even second class seats were booked for the next one month. However, the friendly clerk offered to accommodate him, provided he was not meticulous about being given a ticket. He assured a sleeping berth and safe exit at Bombay Central, for just a couple of hundred rupee notes. Yet another tempting offer.

The Colonel had a crowded programme in Bombay, meetings with a number of big industrial tycoons, bosses of commercial establishments and government officials. For that he needed a motor taxi on daily hire basis. The hotel manager had kindly arranged one for him.

What he found next morning waiting for him in the hotel portico was a big imported limousine, without the fare meter and the usual white registration number plate.

"Such cars are cheap, Saab", explained the old bearded chauffeur, to allay the curiosity of his fare. But he could see from the white man’s puzzled looks that this did not satisfy him. While Col Bill was trying to find suitable Hindustani words; he had lost practice of speaking Hindustani, to ask the man to elucidate the point, the dauntless Punjabi driver, who was not afraid of plain-speaking, at least before a Gora any longer began: "No motor tax to Gormint, Saab. And do you know who is the owner of this car? The son of Mr Patel. A bara afsar in gormint. So no danger". The Colonel nodded to indicate that he understood.

A big business concern was prepared to place a large order with Col Bill. The terms were also more favourable than those of others.

"I’ll see to it that the goods are shown as imported on government account to save some of the taxes, to help us keep the competitive edge", explained the chief executive. "But you shall have to do one thing. Arrange for training for six months or so of one of our men in your factory. This will be entirely at your expense. After this know-how, the man will be made in charge of the wing dealing with your products. This fellow is very useful to us, you see. He is the son of our minister for commerce and industry".

The downslide in the economic life and morale of the country apart, Col Bill could not help wondering how then the governments at the Centre and in the states were able to collect enough revenues to meet their day-to-day expenditure, besides billions of rupees needed for financing their successive five-years plans.