The Mango Businessman

I met him in the train. Strangers meet in trains, & might or might not, at the end of the journey together, exchange phone nos. We didn’t.
He has a textile business.
He also, every summer, shifts base to an obscure little town near Vishakhapattanam, for a seasonal business of mangoes, which his father left him. The mango orchards are in the villages near the East coast.
So, every April, he has this change of location, climate, work schedule & lifestyle. In Delhi, he commutes 40 kms to work. Here, he has an office-cum-residence… Then, one year, he noticed that the neighbourhood of his office-cum-residence had become quite glam; the local “upcoming” leader had moved next doors. So, he kept on on his business, as usual, & smiled, & greeted, & sent complementary gift boxes of the yield to the “local upcoming leader”( while the latter also supposedly made great leaps of progress in his own profession.
Another few years went by & the free cartons of fruits were not good enough anymore. The (now already up) leader, & his upcoming protégés & his near relatives, should be partners in these businesses!
Which are run on their land! employing their people! After all, outsiders will always need local support! & businessmen will always need political backing!
Brings me to think, who is it, that benefits from the produce (not to say labour) of another? Definitionally, it should be the Govt. And, also definitionally, this collection should be known as the taxes. Defined by the law of the country?
Then why is it, that everywhere in this country, individuals & gangs extract money? & of course they run a parallel Govt., if they will do absolutely nothing to appease those that they exploit, then someone will rise in revenge. So they do perform some philanthropic activities. Mainly of religious nature. Or should I say communal?

The Mango Businessman II

My copassenger told us that they conceded to these demands. Not exactly making them partners, but making huge donations. To the religious functions arranged by the leader, to the party funds. In return, what unlawful gains he received out of the latter, he did not tell me. “ I requested him to get me a CNG station in Delhi, he can keep all the proceeds from it, just my ownership on paper. He never once said no. “I’ll see to it” he hasn’t yet seen to it." He further told us that a few months ago, the demands fortified and escalated to threats. How do we elect despots? Democratically pick & send “representatives" that will forge & indulge their own little fiefdoms, squabble among themselves & bleed us so that we are antagonistic of the taxes that we owe the country? So, he and some other businessmen dealing mango produced in the same region were summoned by the leader, now the MLA of that same obscure town, & part of the ruling party, at his residence in Delhi, at urgent notice. They were collectively addressed and elucidated about they all had been formerly separately told. Perhaps this was the leader's one wrong move. Because, according to my copassenger, very soon afterwards, these very businessmen consolidated, stood their ground, & decided to show the leader, that politics needs to be backed by business. Whether my copassenger was a good employer, a fair customer of the locals, a law-abiding businessman, I am in no position to judge. Neither do I swear by the truth of the incidents that he narrated. For the purpose of this particular muse, I assume him to be a “normal” Indian citizen with a balance of conscience & ambition. To be fair to the other party, I have no information as to whether the leader developed a clean or a corrupt image, as to what were his means of success & progress. I guess that these men were only one step away from forming their own political outfit. Would it have done any good to anyone? I wonder.