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Gogoosha’s Country

For the record, I personally do not know any blond woman named Gogoosha. And if I did, I will never tell you.

Gogoosha (real name Gulnara) had it all . A Bachelor’s degree in international Economics, a degree in Design from New York Fashion Institute of Technology, a Master’s degree in Regional Science from Harvard University (!), a Ph.D. in political science from a university in Tashkent , and on the side, a B.A. in Telecommunications. She was the country’s leading fashion designer and displayed her creations in Europe frequently. She owned the biggest company that sold fashionable clothes in her small and poor country. By the way, she also owned a monopoly of the only cellphone company in her country and had a controlling interest in the country’s healthcare and media sectors. She was of course a Professor in Political Science and a senior bureaucrat in the country’s government. If this is not enough, she was an accomplished rock and roll artiste and held concerts in Europe occasionally when she was not too busy. And did I mention that she had a hot body, and a great smile, wavy blond hair and ample natural endowments? She lived in many different mansions that she owned all over the world.

Are you saying WTF? Hold on!

The country’s name is Uzbekistan, and she is the daughter of its erstwhile first president Karimov. The degrees of course were obtained surreptitiously, the business ventures were acquired by appropriation and extortion, and you can draw your own conclusions about her other talents! She could be found swaying to her own music on Youtube – check it out!! Karimov was grooming her and her husband for an eventual succession. BTW her net worth at its peak was about a billion dollars although I am skeptical about the valuation.

I never went to Uzbekistan although I taught in a private American style university in neighboring Kazakhstan, in a city named Almaty. My Kazakh students were rich kids, children of the network that governs and plunders the Kazakh people. However, scholarships were offered to meritorious students from average families from neighboring countries. So I came in close contact with quite a few Uzbek students. I mentored two of them through undergrad and grad programs, helped them profusely with studies, advised them on personal matters and provided substantial financial assistance. There were many others, all men, that I hung out with different degrees of friendships and assistance over the years.

I would like to say that the Uzbeks were nice, warm and honest people. They are , if you mingle with them superficially. Underneath, for at least some of them, there is a trait of religious and moral hypocrisy, dishonesty and generally opportunistic behavior. Maybe I had bad samples! Nevertheless, all my students, hypocrites or not, were very bright and well-read. I learned a lot from them about Uzbek institutions, customs and their personal frustrations with the Uzbek society.

The Uzbek government and the network that controls the country, though, are not nice and warm. They are certifiably vicious and nasty

Karimov’s rule, after he consolidated his power in the late nineties, was a major Kleptocracy. Every single economic activity was restricted , a license was needed to import bananas or computers. The network (Gogoosha and associates) owned the only major wholesale distribution center for consumer goods. Everytime in Uzbekistan, if you ate a meal or rode a taxi, some money went to the network. For a while, Karimov had the balls to order that schools will be declared closed when the cotton harvest is ready , so that ten million or so high school students and teachers will pick cotton that will be exported abroad – the proceeds will go the network, of course!

The Uzbeks are proud of Timur (Temir Lane). Timur’s mausoleum stands proudly in Samarkand ,as one of the most famous sites in Central Asia. I always wanted to visit!

This greatest tourist attraction, Samarkand, was also a moneymaker for the kleptocracy . A foreigner can only come to Uzbekistan if he was invited by an approved travel agency who will make all the travel arrangements. Technically, you could go the Uzbek embassy in Almaty and apply for a tourist visa. That’s what I tried. But you will never get your visa. I was told to come back three times before I got the message. So every tourist that visits Samarkand paid money to an approved travel agency which was owned by (surprise!) the network. Now you know why I did not visit Uzbekistan.

Every major business sector was also controlled by the network. Human rights was a joke. Religious freedoms were non-existent. After the Boston Marathon bombing where the killer brothers were revealed to be from Uzbekistan, the government practically destroyed all kind of religious activity, afraid that the society would turn into a breeding ground for Islamic terrorists. Of course, political freedom remains only a dream for the Uzbeks. Their salaries were low even by Central Asian standards. Not only plundering, the government itself was also slowly choking its citizenry. During the last fifteen years, millions of men have migrated to Russia, Turkey and other countries to eke out a living.

Karimov, the despot , thankfully passed away in 2016. The group that replaced his ilk paid lip service to reform and freedom, but ultimately turned out to be the same kind of anal retentives as the previous regime. So the plight of the Uzbek people continues to this day.

So, what happened to Gogooosha? She divorced her husband in 2005, her father was not very pleased with it . Ultimately she fell out with her father who put her under house arrest. The successor government accused her of corruption, extortion and many other things. The governments of USA, UK and France and Switzerland followed suit, since a lot of the ill- gotten gains were subsequently used for business or personal projects in these countries. To cut a long story short, she remains in jail till today, serving a ten year prison sentence, all her millions frozen in foreign banks. From time to time she sends messages to the world media about her plight.

My heart breaks at her misery! Maybe a young security guard at her house will take pity on her and her considerable endowments and sneak her out of confinement! One can always hope!!

The Great Indian Loot: Living next to the Looters

A few centuries ago, the British started looting India. Of course, they took the diamonds and jewels. But the main loot involved Indian resources. The resources were presumably expropriated by trading through adverse terms of trade. The process has been documented by economists and historians -– it went on for a long time.

Currently, Indian resources are being looted by Indians on a large scale. They expropriate resources earmarked for welfare programs, for capital improvements. They steal funds earmarked for charities.

Funds earmarked for educational programs in schools are being appropriated by teachers. Politicians and their associates are selling jobs for money.

Some of these thieves are fat cats, far away from normal people like us, smoking fat cigars in their mansions or luxury high-rise apartments. But many are all around me. Yes some of my relatives, my friends, my neighbors, and many of my acquaintances are also involved in this Great Indian Loot. It stinks, doesn’t it?

Years ago, in a Kolkata neighborhood, my neighbors will be teachers, bank employees, small business people, government workers and so forth – the kind of people who get regular paychecks, go to work regularly, complain about inflation regularly and disagree with spouses occasionally. They will not be looting anything even if they were not totally above board. After retirement these people will hang out in the local teashops, talk about past bravados, lousy bosses, beautiful women that they did not date but wanted to, and designate all politicians as incompetent nincompoops. If I met these people in my neighborhood after coming back from America after retirement, I will be happily spending my golden years here .

But that’s not to be. My old neighborhood, where I returned, looks similar, but my neighbors have morphed. On my right side, there is a fantastic three-storied house with beautifully landscaped potted plants on the terrace and balcony, three cars and a retinue of servants. A promoter built the house about thirty years ago. In case you do not know about the species called promoters, they started roaming Kolkata about thirty five years ago. Their job was to buy old properties in a rapidly changing city and build high rises, selling them for a profit. The business model was legit – but its execution was neither conventional nor legal. Because of complex property laws, many old houses will have several owners/tenants , some of them paying very low rents under rent control. The promoters will somehow force all the owners/tenants to sell. In the process, sometimes some owners’ children will disappear, and return later with broken limbs or missing virginity, some owners will be robbed or beaten repeatedly, some might even disappear completely. After the land and the old buildings are acquired, lot of bribes were paid and lot of regulations broken in the process of building the new high rise apartment buildings. Apart from these main activities , promoters also dabble in many nefarious ventures and retain a bunch of goons and many local politicians and public servants, including the police, on their payroll.

Our promoter next door, after promoting to his heart’s content, settled down about ten years ago in his nice house, semi-retired. Unfortunately, the gods were not nice to him and he passed away soon afterwards . Now his wife and two grown children live in that house. I do not know what professions, if any, they are engaged in but I do know they keep to themselves. Thye behave like true aristocrats. I hear them calling the servants by their generic names, like “security”, “driver” “darwan” , “gardener” etc. , -never their real names. I also hear their very loud bells that they use to summon the maid ( maids!)

Two doors down, on the other side, an accountant owned a house. He was about my father’s age, worked for the central government – was posted in Ranchi most of his life. He was our timid uncle, very soft spoken, he only visited his house on vacations. He was always scared of his wife who was always mad at him because he lived in far away Ranchi while she had the responsibility for raising their four children. He prayed for a transfer to Kolkata which never materialized. By the time he retired, the kids have grown, the two older boys had become accountants also, and the girl was ready for marriage.

I went to school with the younger accountant boy, we played and chatted for years meeting almost every day. I reconnected with him after I returned from America. I found him reserved and somewhat distant. I thought he was intimidated by me. However, about a month ago agents from the Income Tax department raided his house. They were around for about four days , taking many boxes of documents from his house. He was not arrested, but I am sure he is under subpoena to appear before a judge in the near future.

Entire professions have changed substantively. Accounting was a boring profession, albeit well-compensated. But India changed from the early nineties. From abject poverty and sick domestic industries and draconic banking regulations and stifling government control over all sectors of the economy, India exploded with huge increase in trade and services. The number of both large and small businesses exploded, so did the number of agencies and schools and colleges that receive government funds. Accountants now are very busy and many get paid both over and under the table.

Law enforcement has been generically corrupt since its inception in British India 200 years ago. The legal system in India, for reasons to numerous to discuss here , has been totally dysfunctional for many years. Fortunately, I do not get a chance to hobnob with police officers or lawyers. But school teachers? I had hope there.

When I was enrolled in my local school, the primary school teachers lived below the poverty level, while secondary school teachers lived a little bit above the poverty level. The schools were threadbare, our school had no electricity except in the offices and the teachers’ room downstairs. There were about 15 urinals for the needs of about 3000 students and one tube well for drinking water. No library, only elemental labs, no sports equipment, no landscaping. Again, things changed from the nineties when India started getting prosperous. The teachers’ salaries increased to the point that they are comfortably paid now. During recent years the government built hundreds of new schools – even in remote villages, money started rolling in for capital improvements and infrastructure. At some point of time the looting started, by the teachers themselves, because the funds distributed by the government had limited oversight.

Unaware of all this, I naively went to my old school with an open checkbook, willing to donate big money for a good cause about nine years ago. The headmaster and the others were kind of horrified, and flatly refused to accept any donation from me, lest the accounting entailed with my donation will expose their own pilferage with the school funds. I tried for three years before the reality of the ongoing loot hit me !

As the teachers jobs, in fact all jobs in schools turned out to have decent pay and benefits and much less workload than private sector jobs, administrators and politicians including Bengal’s erstwhile education minister started selling these jobs in exchange for fat bribes. Seven million dollars worth of Indian currency were found in the minister’s mistress’s apartment. The extent of this ongoing scandal and several others like smuggling of cows and stealing of coal has convinced me that every single politician in Bengal is involved in this loot. The Enforcement Directorate is finding millions of dollars worth of additional irregularities in the books almost every day!

Banks in the 70’s and the 80’s were the epitome of inefficiency, the clerical staff and the tellers were intent to do no work if possible. Harried bank officers stayed in their offices until 8 pm at night to finish up the banks’ routine work. Then things changed – loans, mortgages and foreign transactions increased possibly one hundred times as the economy improved. The bank employees started working and were well-compensated, but the big business in India started looting the banks’ loanable funds – many of the bank employees were handsomely rewarded for this. The climax was reached during demonetization in 2016 when about 97% of the old notes came back to the banking system. No matter what people tell you, every single one of the banks’ branch managers and senior employees profited handsomely from this operation.

People in public service and in administrative jobs are surrounded by law enforcement, politicians, and wealthy business people – before you know it they are pushed into schemes where they participate in the loot.

Why am I complaining about this? I have a decent standard of living after retirement in Kolkata. There is wonderful shopping, food and entertainment available at my fingertips. Traffic is a problem but a car with air conditioning makes things easier. But I still can not talk to some of my cousins, their children or many of my old friends. They are hesitant to discuss their work life with me, some are actually afraid that their display of wealth disproportionate to their income will upset me.

Don’t get me wrong. I have met some very nice school teachers, some professors, a sweet librarian who specialized in Chinese, a musician and some small business people – I happily hang out with them. I even found some charities that will not steal my money. My regret is that I hoped to have a more vigorous and more extensive social life after I retired in India.

There are shameless people I keep on meeting in Kolkata. A few years ago I met a great singer of classical music in a cultural gathering. Her husband was a councilor for a municipality in a suburb of Kolkata, We started talking and when he heard that I am visiting his neighborhood for a wedding invitation, he invited me to his house. Four of us went to his penthouse apartment and our jaws dropped. The furniture, the curtains, the window decorations, the wall decorations, the artwork, the lighting, everything was custom made – obviously done by an interior decorator. The apartment had a dreamy quality to it, right out of Bollywood – like a multi-millionaire’s house.

“This is a fabulous place. How do you keep everything clean and shiny?” I asked

“We don’t live here” The councillor said

“Huh?” It was my turn to be surprised, again.

“We come here twice every week to drink some tea. That’s when the maid comes to clean up” he said

“We live in our older house with our grown son and his family “ He clarified.

Of course, with his councilor’s salary of 30 K rupees (about 375 dollars) per month or so, this apartment can not be shown to the public. The interior decorations and the artwork and the furnishing themselves must have cost about 100 thousand dollars!! He was just showing it off to the old NRI fool!