This seemed so absurd I rang the school myself and was told politely by a man called Sufiyan that he was helpless because of the new rule that came into force three months ago. “Even if I teach him how to drive,” he said, “it would be no use because it is the RTO that gives the license and they will not give it without proof of citizenship.”

How do people below the poverty line prove this? The Indian state excels at making rules that keep our poorest citizens in poverty and they do this most brutally by imposing a license raj on pavement shops and hawkers. Licenses are almost impossible to get but when an unlicensed hawker is caught by municipal officials, his goods are confiscated and his pathetic little stall smashed. The license raj has created a vast infrastructure of corruption that thrives on takings from India’s poorest citizens.

Street vendors exist in every city in the world and make an honest living and should be allowed to exist in a country that provides so few other opportunities. All that is needed is a few simple rules that regulate numbers and cleanliness. Millions of Indians would lift themselves out of poverty if this happens, but it will not because hafta to policemen and officials is too large a vested interest.

Now let’s talk of Nandigram. If you look beyond the bloodshed and the horror, what is happening is quite simply that the state is grabbing land from people for whom it is their only livelihood. That it happens under a Marxist government makes it worse but this kind of land grabbing from the poor happens all the time because they usually cannot fight back.

... contd.