The Recidivism of Fraud
Acronyms used in this post: None.
The first smell is incense trying to defeat urine.
You know the place. The Indian staircase. One agarbatti shivering heroically beside a cracked tile Ganesh, a drain below it doing its own public service announcement in piss, phenyl, old rice water, damp socks, and somebody’s troubled intestine. Civilization, in our part of the world, often begins with a bell, a plastic flower, and a smell that suggests the building has lost a legal dispute with its own plumbing.
That is where I want to drag the word recidivism.
Not politely.
By the ear.
Recidivism usually means a criminal returning to crime after punishment, prison, correction, reform, counseling, yoga, moral lecture, or whatever other decorative napkin society places over the same old stain. The word belongs to criminology. It wears spectacles. It sits in reports. It smells faintly of court files and institutional tea.
But why should criminals have all the fun?
In India, we return to many things after being punished by them.
We return to godmen after being cheated by godmen.
We return to astrologers after their predictions have collapsed like a wet papad.
We return to miracle cures after the previous miracle needed antibiotics.
We return to the same politician, the same broker, the same cousin with “contacts,” the same banker with a smile smooth enough to wax a car, the same social habit of saying, “Chhere dao, this is how things work.”
This is not merely crime.
This is recurrence.
This is repetition with sandalwood paste.
This is the national talent for touching the hot tawa, screaming, applying Burnol, and then touching it again next Tuesday because someone’s uncle said the auspicious time was 10:43 a.m.
A man is cheated by a holy man. Next month he visits a numerologist. The numerologist changes one letter in his name and charges him enough to feed a small para for a week. The man comes home, poorer but spiritually rearranged, and forwards a video claiming planetary vibrations can cure diabetes if you drink copper water facing northeast.
You laugh.
Then the phone rings.
It is someone you know asking whether you know anyone in the municipality who can “help” with a document.
The comedy becomes autobiography very quickly.
Petty fraud in India arrives in a sweaty shirt. It sits on a plastic chair. It says, “Dada, little adjustment.” It smells of photocopy ink, paan, cheap perfume, and the exhaustion of a man who has learned that every counter is a toll booth.
Large fraud arrives in air-conditioning. It has imported shoes. It says “liquidity stress,” “restructuring,” “market headwinds,” “strategic exposure,” and “temporary mismatch.” It sits before bankers who nod with the grave faces of men attending a funeral for money that is not theirs.
The small fraudster asks you to pay cash without receipt.
The large fraudster asks a banking consortium to understand his vision.
One steals a ceiling fan.
The other steals the ceiling and calls it infrastructure.
And yet we pretend they are different species. We punish the small one first because he is easy to catch, easy to slap, easy to display. He has no lawyer with a surname that opens doors. He has no English thick enough to hide inside. He has no PowerPoint deck where theft has been bathed, perfumed, and renamed temporary operational turbulence.
Respectability is the real washing machine.
Put a dirty shirt into it with enough English, signatures, legal opinion, temple visits, charity photographs, and one smiling picture with an important man, and out comes a visionary entrepreneur.
This is where superstition enters, not as religion in the private sense, not as the old widow whispering a name in the dark because the knees hurt and the children live far away. I have no quarrel with that. Human beings need small lamps. Night is large. Loneliness is not a TED Talk.
I mean public religiosity.
The stage version.
The microphone version.
The loudspeaker-at-5-a.m. version.
The version with donation boxes, miracle ash, political blessings, real estate, unpaid women cooking in the background, and a committee of men who have discovered that holiness becomes much easier when it has parking rights.
I mean superstition as a second operating system running under society.
One system says law.
The other says arrangement.
One system says evidence.
The other says belief.
One system says queue.
The other says uncle knows someone.
One system says medicine.
The other says wear this stone, chant this line, avoid brinjal on Saturdays, and for serious cases consult a man whose main qualification is the confidence of a railway announcer during heavy rain.
Science enters India like a thin schoolteacher with chalk on his sleeve and immediately gets surrounded by men with rings on eight fingers explaining quantum consciousness, Vedic aviation, magnetic bracelets, vastu-compliant toilets, cow-based economics, cosmic vibrations, and why changing the spelling of your name can improve your mutual fund returns.
Science says, “Can you show evidence?”
The room laughs.
Evidence is considered rude. Evidence is what people ask for when they have no manners. Asking for proof in India is like asking the bridegroom for his blood sugar report during the wedding. Technically sensible. Socially fatal.
But the body keeps evidence.
This is the little joke no one escapes.
Sugar rises.
Kidney fails.
Tumor grows.
Debt compounds.
The bridge cracks.
The bank collapses.
The hospital burns.
The exam paper leaks.
The miracle cure quietly becomes chemotherapy.
Reality is slow, but it is not sentimental. It does not care how many flowers you bought. It does not check whether the lie came with incense, Sanskrit, nationalism, corporate English, family blessing, or an elderly auntie saying, “A little faith is necessary.”
I am an atheist, but not the shiny showroom kind. I am the lower-middle-class Calcutta variety, which means my disbelief sits next to unpaid bills, damp towels, a rice cooker, cheap tea, and the daily arithmetic of survival. It is not a philosophy so much as a worn-out umbrella. It does not stop the storm. It merely prevents a little water from entering one ear.
At fifty-one, single, living in the shanty edges of South Calcutta, with fifteen years of American healthcare technology work behind me and a present income that behaves like a shy ghost, I no longer have the luxury of elegant illusions. When you are young, you can mistake fraud for opportunity. At fifty-one, you can smell it before it enters the room.
Usually it smells of reassurance.
That is the dangerous part.
Fraud in India does not usually arrive with a knife.
It arrives with familiarity.
“Dada will arrange.”
“Sir has influence.”
“Madam knows the office.”
“Temple will protect.”
“Planet will improve.”
“Leader will develop.”
“Startup will scale.”
“Bank will restructure.”
“Just sign here.”
“Don’t worry.”
The two most expensive words in the Indian language are probably “Don’t worry.”
Every disaster I have seen in this country begins with them standing around like two innocent goats.
Do not worry, the promoter is reliable.
Do not worry, the documents are manageable.
Do not worry, the doctor knows.
Do not worry, the bridge is safe.
Do not worry, the bank is strong.
Do not worry, this baba is genuine.
Do not worry, only small adjustment.
Then the floor gives way.
Not dramatically at first. No orchestra. No lightning. Just a small crack. A delayed payment. A missing receipt. A file that has gone upstairs. A phone that is switched off. A report that will come tomorrow. A man who was very available before taking money and has now discovered a deep interest in silence.
This is the first rule of Indian recidivism: we do not return to the same fraud because we are fools every time. Sometimes we return because the alternative is expensive.
Truth has a cost.
Doubt has a cost.
Evidence has a cost.
Saying no has a cost.
Refusing the bribe has a cost.
Refusing the ritual has a cost.
Refusing the family astrologer may cost peace at home for six months and one auntie’s permanent disapproval, which in Bengal is not a small matter. Auntie disapproval has a half-life longer than uranium.
So we adjust.
Adjustment is our national yoga. Flexible spine, collapsed ethics.
And I am not above it. Let us not pretend I am standing on a marble balcony with a glass of mineral water, inspecting the moral sewage below. I have adjusted. I have swallowed things I should have spat out. I have kept quiet when I knew the sentence in the room was false. I have smiled because survival sometimes arrives carrying a dirty mattress and says, “Lie down, scholar, you are tired.”
Every compromise leaves residue.
At first it is tiny. One grain behind the ribs. Then another. Then another. One day your chest is not a chest but a storeroom of swallowed disgust, with damp walls and no ventilation.
This is how a society recidivates.
Not by one giant crime.
By millions of small returns.
The man returns to the astrologer because uncertainty frightens him.
The family returns to the godman because medicine is expensive and hope is available in installments.
The clerk returns to the bribe because salary is small and shame has become cheaper than fish.
The banker returns to the glamorous borrower because the suit is good and the risk committee is sleepy.
The voter returns to the fraud because the fraud speaks his anger fluently.
The educated man returns to silence because he has rent to pay, teeth to fix, medicines to buy, and no appetite for becoming a martyr before lunch.
This is not an Indian defect alone. Fraud is universal. The Romans had it. The British had it. The Americans built skyscrapers to house it, then gave it parking, tax advice, and a conference badge.
Our specialty is the garnish.
Fraud with incense.
Fraud with family blessing.
Fraud with patriotic music.
Fraud with spiritual vocabulary.
Fraud with corporate English.
Fraud with a mother goddess calendar on the wall.
Fraud with a soft head-wobble.
Fraud with plausible deniability.
Fraud, in short, wearing a clean kurta.
There should be official categories.
Recidivism of superstition: first offense, believing the astrologer. Second offense, returning after the prediction fails. Third offense, explaining that the prediction failed because Saturn was misunderstood, as if Saturn is a tired postal worker in Dum Dum who delivered misfortune to the wrong address.
Recidivism of religiosity: first offense, donating to spectacle while the neighbor’s child has no medicine. Second offense, calling the spectacle heritage. Third offense, attacking anyone who notices that the divine enterprise seems unusually dependent on cash, loudspeakers, land, political protection, and unpaid female labor.
Recidivism of petty fraud: first offense, cutting a line. Second offense, bribing for a certificate. Third offense, complaining that the country has no discipline while asking the electrician to bypass the meter.
Recidivism of big fraud: first offense, borrowing too much. Second offense, dressing theft in English. Third offense, fleeing, negotiating, moralizing, giving interviews, and wearing the kind of face that looks designed by evolution to survive public disgust.
And then there is the recidivism of public memory, our masterpiece.
We remember who did not invite us to a wedding in 1997.
We remember cricket scores.
We remember insults with archival precision.
We remember caste, surname, fish preference, and who took the larger piece of mutton at a family lunch during the Vajpayee era.
But the bank fraud? The bridge collapse? The hospital fire? The examination scam? The miracle cure? The holy man with imported watches? Gone. Evaporated. Replaced by a new banner, a new slogan, a new face, a new scheme, and a fresh round of citizens blinking like goats outside a tuition center.
Correction would require memory.
Memory would require shame.
Shame would require standards.
Standards would require saying no before the house burns down.
This is where the whole thing becomes inconvenient.
Because everyone wants punishment after the fraud. Very few want prevention before the fraud. Prevention is boring. Prevention has no drama. Prevention is checking documents, asking questions, keeping records, refusing shortcuts, demanding evidence, annoying relatives, delaying excitement, and becoming the sort of person others describe as “difficult.”
In India, “difficult” often means “not yet digested by the system.”
The system prefers soft people. Adjustable people. People who bend at the counter, at the temple, at the office, at the bank, at the family meeting. People who know that truth is nice but timing is everything. People who can say “yes” with the mouth while the brain quietly packs its bags.
Meanwhile, life continues.
The milk packet leaks in the fridge. The ceiling fan clicks like an old judge clearing his throat. A mosquito conducts aerial surveillance over my ankle. The tea cools. Somewhere a child is learning physics from a coaching center named after a Greek letter nobody there can pronounce. Somewhere a politician is promising development with the facial expression of a man selling umbrellas in December. Somewhere a banker is discovering that risk, like household dust, is easier to ignore from a distance.
And somewhere another small fraud is being born.
Not in a secret lair.
In a living room.
Over tea.
With biscuits.
Someone says, “There is one way.”
That sentence is the little drumroll before the circus elephant enters.
So yes, make recidivism flexible.
Let it out of the prison manual.
Give it a lungi, a ledger, a garland, a stamped affidavit, a donation receipt, a business-class ticket, a bottle of rose water, a microphone, a saffron cloth, a corporate brochure, and a fake humble smile.
Let it describe not only the criminal who returns to crime, but the believer who returns to manipulation, the citizen who returns to obedience, the banker who returns to lending against perfume and posture, the middleman who returns to his toll booth of the soul, and the educated man who knows better but returns to silence because survival has pinned him to the mattress.
Outside, somebody rings a bell before a household shrine.
Inside, the drain burps.
I sit with my tea going cold, my faith in correction thinner than the watery dal of a bankrupt hostel, and somewhere in this country another holy man, another broker, another banker, another patriotic fraud with excellent hair is discovering, with the serene confidence of a repeat offender, that India is not merely a market, not merely a nation, and not even a civilization on certain evenings.
It is a lock that has learned to fall in love with the thief.