A Feast of Vultures: The Hidden Business of Democracy in India

by Josy Joseph

I met an old man who was, for a few decades, personal assistant to one of the country’s senior-most members of parliament. After endless cups of tea, he opened up. That both of us shared a mother tongue, Malayalam, helped. He told me about a round of bribes – not the one that resulted in Jha’s murder – that was being circulated in New Delhi for the survival of another minority government. One evening, the government’s agents landed up at the MP’s official residence with a huge bag full of cash. After the visitors took their leave, the MP and our narrator locked the gate, shut all the doors and windows of the ageing white mansion. They broke the tiled floor of the house and dug the ground beneath. ‘We kept the bag in a hole, spread sand over it and cemented it,’ he recalled. To hide the amateur cementing, they pulled an old carpet over it. After the new government survived the confidence vote in parliament, and the political dust settled, the floor of the bedroom was dug again. The cash bag was taken by road to the MP’s hometown hundreds of kilometres from New Delhi, accompanied by the leader himself and his security guards. A distillery was constructed with the money.