The attention of the whole country was drawn recently to the IT raids that were conducted in the properties owned by the family of a retired cop of Nagaland police who was till recently attached to the Police headquarters as a consultant. The benefit of doubt goes to the person who rose from a constable to the level of an Additional SP in the department and who is also a recipient of the President’s medal for meritorious service. However, the ripple created by Modi’s trump card, demonetisation, that is felt in this faraway land where its inhabitants are not required to pay income tax, obviously may just be the tip of the iceberg of so many such scenarios in the State and also the other parts of Northeast. After demonetisation, most of the people with unaccounted money for obvious and various reasons were forced to deposit the demonetised notes and in the process were made to declare their assets that were unaccounted earlier. It was in such a scenario that the present case came to the notice of the Income Tax department since the declarant’s assets were disproportionate to his income, thus attracting the IT raids. Only when the investigation is complete will it be known whether his income was through legitimate business or not. However his services were at least invaluable to the Government of Nagaland until the raids occurred for it is reported he knew his way around the bowels of power at New Delhi. The Northeast region was always alienated in some way or the other since Independence which was again aggravated by the various nationalist movements in many of the states. The language barrier was another factor that the locals from the region found it hard to catch up, thus resulting in even a simple communication becoming a major problem. The lack of interpersonal skills especially in a language that was somewhat foreign and also imposed upon was quite conspicuous for many years. The language factor might also be the reason why people from the region were more attracted to South India and vice-versa for such a long time. Though not exhaustive but these are some of the reasons why officials from the region always required brokers and middlemen. After liberalisation, with the growth that India witnessed the number of centrally sponsored schemes and funds increased manifold. By the time of the UPA 2 came to power at the centre, the tales the middlemen for selection of the DPRs at various ministries in Delhi had attained legendary statuses. Every ministry receives at least 4-6 Detailed Project Reports from all the states in each of the various schemes that comes under that ministry. One single DPR is usually a minimum of 200 pages in volume. There were 28 states in India then, so the math works out to 100 plus DPRs of minimum 200 pages for a scheme from all the states added up. It is humanly impossible to check minutely each and every DPR at the stipulated time. So it is said that visits to the tea stalls and canteens near the ministry office where the ministry staffs had their teas and snacks did the trick of acting on the buoyancy of the DPRs to rise above the rest. This is just one case of the middleman scenario in the country. The procedures framed by the Central Government was inadvertently giving life to the middleman system to flourish over the years. The so called ‘street smart’ persons were therefore required to move around the corridors of power in New Delhi which obviously came with different cuts at different levels. The scenario would have worsened had it not the present government initiated measures to check the middlemen system in almost all the funding process and many of the centrally sponsored schemes were stopped. As it is said that it is impossible to wake up a person who is only pretending to be sleeping, the government of Nagaland was forced to finally terminate the service of the consultant only after the person came under the IT scanner. However it should be taken as an eye opener that the era of the middleman system in India is coming to an end.
