Elimination Act 2040

It was called the Elimination Act 2040 and it spread panic through the length and breadth of the country. But in expensive bars and country clubs rich men and women toasted the new law that would systematically put an end to poverty. ‘Those who don’t deserve to live need to die’ became the familiar refrain. Since the status of one’s bank account became the sole criterion for being counted among the living, those who had amassed wealth through fair means or foul exuded the confidence of those who knew they would survive.

"The new law is only a logical extension of the downsizing scheme employers once had to resort to. If you do not contribute to the system then the system has no option but to get rid of you," is how an editorial in a Delhi newspaper justified the new Act. "For too long have those who live off the system been pardoned. While the discontinuation of all subsidies on food and medicine has led to a marginal reduction in the population, the elimination process had to be initiated to ensure that tax-paying citizens are not denied their right to a comfortable existence," it added.

In the poorer quarters, the alarm bells began to ring even as the Act was made public. The news was out that surveys would soon be conducted to determine those to be eliminated. Those not paying income-tax would be the first victims. The only way a poor man or woman could escape the net was if he or she was a certified domestic help or a worker at the house or place of work of a certified tax payee.

Those fortunate enough to be taxpayers affected a swagger of newfound confidence. The old Darwinian concept of the survival of the fittest was recodified as the ‘survival of the richest’. It was argued that the non-productive element of the population could no longer be tolerated. Those who could not fend for themselves had no option but to die.

"Fifty years ago we fooled ourselves into thinking that one had to rehabilitate those we displaced before we built dams. Those who advocated that a million people who contributed nothing should drown for the good of 10 million were dismissed as reactionaries. But today we are beginning to see wisdom in their words." Thus spake an edit writer on the Net, revelling in what she called the "dawn of the right-wing Utopia".

Great thinkers of the day implored the have-nots to accept their fate and come forward for the elimination programme. Catch slogans-’Sacrifice yourself for a better tomorrow’; ‘I won’t suffer. I’d rather die’-began to make their appearance on hoardings in cities and small towns.

What gave the government the courage to enact the law was the theory that thanks to modern technology the state had become far too powerful for an individual or a group of individuals to take it on. Strikes and protests had long since died out after the police acquired sophisticated riot-control equipment that could tame even the most violent mobs. In any case, politicians had abandoned their pretensions of being concerned about the economically weak ever since voting rights were denied to those who did not pay taxes. That was a good 20 years ago.

The upper class had every reason to celebrate. At last would they get rid of what many described as the "scum of the earth". It was noted that the move initiated by the government may not be humane but would improve the quality of life in the years to come. It was reiterated that for every step forward someone had to pay. Those fortunate to fall into the ‘can live’ bracket were only too happy that they were not the ones to be sacrificed. ..

Madhavan lived in a slum outside Sonepat, an extended suburb of Delhi. He had just lost his job as a security guard in a factory the other side of town. His pleas to his employer that he was willing to work without pay had fallen on deaf ears. Madhavan joined the ranks of the ‘can’t live’ destined to die the following year.

He had read the details of the Elimination Act. It was only a culmination of a process set into motion at the turn of the century. First in the name of progress, those below the poverty line were taken off the priority list of the nation’s planners. Then advancement was linked to the building of expressways and acquiring new technologies for the well-being of the upper crust. Slowly but surely subsidies of every kind were discontinued. "Those who can’t pay do not deserve to be served," became the dictum. Thus government hospitals were wound up or handed over to giant corporations who ran them on a commercial basis. Public transport systems were privatised, making travel of every kind beyond the reach of the ordinary citizen. Electricity and water became massive profit-making ventures for multinational companies.

But all that was history. The new Act had suddenly added a new dimension to survival and death. The government had already spelt out the care that would be taken to ensure that those on the kill list would die a painless death. All it would require was a dose of a new, intravenously-administered drug. Tests on dogs and pigs had already proved its efficacy.

Unless he got himself a job, Madhavan had exactly 11 months and 20 days to live. As he lay on his cot in the pokey tin-roof hut he wondered why no one had raised a voice of protest against a law that would kill over 70 per cent of the population. Perhaps it was fear. The police and special intelligence squads kept a close watch on those on the prospective kill list. Troublemakers seemed to have simply disappeared. It was believed that they were brutally tortured before being bumped off.

The fear of the police was so etched in the minds of the common citizenry that Madhavan found even his closest friends were afraid to share their paranoia about the fate that awaited them. Their logic was that anybody could be a police agent and should you speak your mind, the chances are you will end up dying even before the Act came into effect.

So in the government bars where free liquor was supplied, none spoke ill of the new law. Indeed, many would praise it. "Our prime minister is a very wise man. Whatever he does, he does for the good of the nation. He has asked us to sacrifice ourselves and we must forget our self for the betterment of the country." Madhavan was surprised at such reactions. The free liquor was believed to contain a chemical that made those who consumed it docile and took away from them the will to protest. But it couldn’t contain their fear of death.

Ever since the new law was announced, Madhavan had stopped drinking. This was a tough task since imbibing a minimum dose of alcohol was compulsory for non-tax paying citizens. The trick was to go to the bar and pretend you have knocked back your quota and participate in the patriotic tripe. "Madhavan, do you know in the next five years the Indian economy will overtake that of the United States? We will be a nation of plenty and our population will be down to the 1950 level! Our prime minister is truly a great visionary," were his neighbour Kanniah’s words of wisdom the previous evening.

He felt sorry for him and wanted to shake him from his reverie. But that would mean attracting the attention of the intelligence officer attached to the bar. Madhavan knew that Kanniah was mouthing the words in the hope that the official, impressed by his patriotism, would organise a ‘can-live’ certificate for him.

Madhavan discovered that not participating in the ritualistic drinking made him think. This compounded the pain and outrage that began to well within him. He found it strange that an entire population with the biological instinct to live was now accepting a death forced upon them by the state without protest.

But Madhavan could see the panic all around him. Like him, most others did odd jobs at the commercial establishments in the neighbourhood to earn their keep. But these jobs were categorised as casual and were no insurance against death. The government decision to levy a special tax on those who employ others in the ‘can live’ class had ensured that most employment would be casual by nature. It also led to the sacking of many employees.

Madhavan was a bachelor. He was not single out of choice. Ever since marriage and child-rearing was made the privilege of taxpayers five years earlier he’d shelved all matrimonial plans. As for sex, it came free at the government-run brothels. These institutions of sin were set up so that the wretches in the slums would satisfy their sex drive and not cast their evil eyes on the wives and daughters of taxpayers.

It was all very strange. Alcohol and sex were fully subsidised. But food, water and medicines came at a heavy price. A practice pursued by many doctors in the previous century that only those who can pay need to be treated was adopted as the national health policy. The more serious the illness, the higher the advance one had to deposit fore being admitted to a hospital. Community water taps in slums turned on for a minute only after you put in the required number of coins into the slot provided.

The only thing that still came free was the air that one breathed. Not quite, thought Madhavan, because in a year’s time the right to live itself would be taken away from people like him.

Whatever the others had to say at the bar, Madhavan did not wish to die. He’d have to figure out a way to survive. The only immediate option was to find a job (in the tax bracket). But since he had not studied beyond school his chances were limited. It was not as if he was not academically inclined. His parents not being taxpayers, he was excluded from the privilege of seeking admission in college. Even while he was in school a law was enacted making higher education the sole preserve of the privileged. The government in its wisdom obviously believed that children of non-taxpayers lacked in intelligence.

But where was Madhavan to find a job with the ‘can live’ guarantee? Whenever he had the time he wandered around the city. But he drew a blank. Casual jobs there were aplenty but that meant nothing. "I won’t die! I won’t die! There must be a way out," he would reassure himself every night.

A good 50 miles away from where Madhavan lived, Victor George Kutty was having his share of troubles. Till a few months ago, things were going well for him. The sex shop he ran which sold S&M equipment was doing good business but the opening of two rival outfits in the neighbourhood led to a sizeable chunk of his clients deserting him. With business dwindling and creditors at his throat, he feared he was fast slipping into the ‘can’t live’ category.

His friends were no longer kindly disposed towards him. The minute they realised that his financial status was shaky, they turned away. His competitors wrote anonymous letters to the tax authorities urging them to reassess his social status. ‘VG’, as he was popularly known, could see the writing on the wall. One of these days he would be busted and would lose all the privileges of a taxpayer.

The very thought of going job-hunting repulsed him. He could think of no one who would employ him. Ten years experience of running a sex shop would probably get him a sales assistant’s job and that too on a casual basis.

He would immediately be bracketed with the ‘can’t lives’ and that would mean giving up his apartment and moving to a hutment dwelling. His upper-class liquor licence would be taken away from him and he would be forced to drink the vile chemical they force down the throats of the masses in the free government-run bars.

Once downgraded, there was no way he could claw back to his present status. The laws were such that while the rich could get richer there was no possibility of the poor bettering their lives. The best VG could hope for now was a job with a ‘can live’ classification. If he failed to achieve this he, too, would have to join the ranks of those to be eliminated 11 months hence.

The bank had already sent its final notice. VG knew he was running on borrowed time. Another fortnight was all he had. His shop would be auctioned. Then his flat would go. His credit cards would be seized and he would be rendered a second-class citizen.

VG knew he had to do something before the axe came down on him. He had already informed his two shop assistants of the tragedy that lay in store for them. Luckily, he was not married. At least on that count VG considered himself fortunate. There was nothing more disconcerting than having a child and wife cursing you for having failed them. If he joined the ranks of the ‘can’t lives’, then they too would have been put on the government’s elimination list.

VG used his last two weeks of freedom to tap every one of his sources to help him land a job. He had drawn a blank. Even those he had helped in the past failed him. Everyone seemed to be obsessed with his or her own survival. The Elimination Act ensured the end of friendship of every kind.

Though he ran a sex shop, VG’s least concern was sex. He did frequent the government brothels but more often than not he spent his time chatting up a tall lanky girl from his hometown, Kottayam, in Kerala. Ammu was her name and she quite liked VG’s sense of humour. He in turn found her an intelligent and compassionate soul.

"I’m soon going to join the ranks of the ‘can’t lives’, so be good to me," he had told her as he snuggled up to her. Ammu never treated VG as a customer. There was an emotive element in their relationship that made him more of a friend. There would be days when the two would just talk. She found it amusing that a taxpayer like him would be interested in her. Being a pleasure worker in this day and age meant a robotic woman with a vagina and no mind. Somehow Ammu had managed to keep her wits about her.

"So you lose your money and you lose your life and your mind?" Ammu teased.
"If you are poor, you’re a nobody. Who wants to listen to what you have to say?"
"But I want to listen. There are others who wish to share their thoughts," Ammu was suddenly fervent.
"But what can you or any of the others you speak about achieve? Can they take on the government?"
"So you are like the rest. The state says die and you will die! The state says you have stopped making sense and you become an idiot. Don’t you have an identity?" Ammu was at her taunting best.
"Who are these ‘others’ that you talk about?" VG was mildly curious.
"They are people who come to us. They are all frustrated. But each thinks they are the only ones in that state. They are like you. All of them live in isolation."
"How do I get to meet them?" VG was now interested.
"Why don’t you come by tomorrow evening at six?"

VG was suddenly excited. This little girl, all of 18, could well change his life. He suddenly saw Ammu in a different light. She seemed to have that something all others he knew lacked. She seemed to have the spirit to fight.

When he left the pleasure dome-as brothels were called-VG was a changed man. From wracking his mind on how to get a ‘can-live’ job he had begun to question the government’s right to eliminate him. He was not clear about how he would fight the system but he knew he had to do it. But at the core of his resolve was a girl 15 years his younger.

Ammu had inspired him like no one else. She had opened his eyes to a new line of thinking. There was an infectious fervour in her thoughts. "Everyone seems to be talking about ‘can’t live’ and ‘can live’. Has anyone thought about ‘will live-won’t die’?" Ammu had asked, and her words kept ringing in his ear as he made his way home.

VG woke up the next morning with a spring in his step. His neighbours noticed the transformation. "He must have got a ‘can-live’," they thought. Others felt that he must have wrangled a loan. Happiness was a one-dimensional concept about being in the ‘can live’ bracket.

He was his brightest when he got to the shop. No one could escape-nor explain-his enthusiasm or his chirping. "Have you pulled off a loan?" his accountant, Mukund, inquired. But VG did not disclose the source of his happiness. He was quite content distributing among his employees the last of the money he had.

When he downed the shutters for the day, he was a pauper. Within a week the government would declare him a ‘can’t live’. But VG was determined to fight. The last thing he wanted was to be eliminated by the state.

As he caught the shuttle to the pleasure dome, VG thought about Ammu. There was more thought packed into her mind than all the so-called thinkers of the day. In the age of the celebration of mediocrity the average was being toasted. Anything not mundane was dismissed as ludicrous and anti-state.

VG remembered having read a paper by a scholar extolling the virtues of mediocrity. In that was traced the new awakening to the 1990s when the nation "realised the necessity of the acceptance of the mediocre". As a result, the concept of art itself was redefined. Masala movies came to be recognised as classics. Film music gained recognition as an art form. And writers of middle-of-the-road fiction acquired an intellectual halo.

Fundamental research, identified as a non-profit venture in the 1980s, was finally banned in 2005. History was also rewritten about that time. The names of the likes of Mahatma Gandhi, Bhagat Singh and Subhash Chandra Bose were deleted from all existing books. In their place came the great industrialists who’d shaped the country. Turnover was the key to fame and those who attracted the maximum capital were given god-like status.