Like most of Independent India's sins, this one too is believed to have originated from the British Raj. But we won't waste time over establishing the origins or the relevance of the subject of our story in this age of round-the-clock fraudulence. It's about just one month of the year: March. And the plot is one of economic horror.

So, no fiction is promised, nor any humour. The ambition is to document an economic practice that happens every Spring in Bihar and is referred to as `The March Loot' by its practitioners and its victims with equal longing and cultural sanction.

The economic practice is so regulated as to necessitate all payments by the Government to be made by March 31. If you, as an individual authorised to draw direct from the state coffers, fail to do so, you are guilty of non-utilisation of precious development money. So you have to pay. But before that you have to show that development work has been done. So what you do first is find a contractor. He could be anybody. Your sibling, your friend, your uncle's son-in-law. Anyone. It could be you the shadow Samaritan. Then you assign him work, as enjoined by our planners in Delhi or Washington. The agent of development will take up the work, spend his own money and at times finish it too. Now it is time to pay. But it's only November. So you have to wait. And you wait till March is in.

Why wait? Because this interregnum will be the gestation period for the growth fund to grow into loot: The beauty of the booty is in the waiting. You, the honest executive of the Government's grand project, the prospective lord of all our irrigated land, the devoted priest of Nehru's Modern Temples, will show great moral responsibility in clearing all the contractual bills over the last two or three weeks of the financial year. Like one frenzied night, the month is over. You have contributed your mite to the nation's prosperity, and a tonne to your own.

Another marble-tiled houses is built. Several pairs of Lee jeans are sold. Your son has migrated to Delhi; your daughter to conjugal bliss. Your wife's discontent is overwhelmed by gold. The nation has one more of its sons out of misery.

They say that even as a starry-eyed Nehru climbed atop the Bhakra Nangal dam, one engineer sold hundred sacks of development cement on the bank of river Kosi.

While the annual act of March Loot lies with our wonderful ability to merge national well-being with our own, the sharing of the booty is a trifle more complex. Apart from deeply egalitarian motifs that often drive individuals to share monetary happiness with ranks above and below, it is the permanence of the practice that forces a proper institutionalisation of sharing. Many holes are cut in the conduit pipe between the Minister and the contractor. The Minister, if he is bold enough, takes his share away before releasing the funds. The weaker among them wait till March, when packets arrive from everywhere. The Minister is a detached figurehead. It the officer at the site of the development work which has been done/undone who plays the real dealer in equity loot.

March loot is so integral to the economy that it is never efficient. Despite all efforts, half the state's development money is left unspent. They simply can't spend enough. Today, Rs 950 crore and 56 unfiled chargesheets later, we are inclined to believe that this sense of guilt inspired the great fodder scam. A month's effort was found too little and the established route of fund flow dated. So what the pioneers at the state animal husbandry department did was invent 12 Marches.

The glory of the old March festival, however, lives on.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.