 First, let me begin with a confession. I didn't really know anything about Atik Ahmed till very recently, mostly because he didn't really make it to national news headlines when I used to follow the news regularly. I only got to know of him when he was gunned down in police custody on live TV. Apparently, he knew his life was in danger. His son, who was also a gangster, had just been killed in an encounter but Atik Ahmed's lawyer had been assured that he will be safe in police custody. Well, as you know, that turned out to be wrong. Atik is dead and his murder has kicked up a storm of debates about communal politics, minority rights, about extrajudicial killings and a whole host of other things. But I'm not going to go into that in this video. I'm going to look at a more fundamental question. Where do India's criminal politicians emerge from? What is the source of their popularity? Who protects them? Who do they protect? And ultimately, what causes their final demise? To answer that, I need to tell you a story. It's from 2013-14, nearly a decade ago. I used to work for NDTV at that time and every evening the road outside our office building would turn into a veritable food street. Hawkers would appear and set up these temporary stalls selling samosas, momos, bananda, kathi rolls. And every day right before the evening prime time rush kicked in, we would go down to get something to eat. At the time this particular incident happened, I was on one of my perennial diet. So I used to be a regular with a guy who used to sell jhal moori, made of murmura, a bit of peanuts, some green chili, some nimbu squeezed in and a dash of mustard oil. His name, if I remember correctly, was Raju. One of his legs had been affected by polio. So he walked with a long stick with his bad leg kind of wrapped around it. And sometimes, if I'd gone down a little early, you could see him coming down the road with his walking stick, pushing a heavy cart with just one hand. You needed to be really strong to be able to do that. I mean, I tried to help him move his cart once and I just couldn't. But to cut a long story short, most of the hawkers who used to set up shop outside our office didn't have any license. There were just two permanent kiosks, if I remember correctly, which had been approved by the municipal authorities. The rest were just winging it. Now, normally cops would come and go say nothing, maybe get a free samosa and chai, I don't know. They basically turned a blind eye to what was clearly an illegal operation. But every few weeks, there would be a raid. We would see it from the large plate glass windows of our office. Usually, the hawkers would get wind of it, quickly pack up their things and make a dash for it down the road. The municipal authorities would come in their vans and catch a few stragglers who hadn't made it out in time. Their cooking vessels, their kiosks and all the kaccha mal they had would be confiscated and loaded onto the municipality vans. And we could see the errant hawkers standing there meekly. You could see their subservient body language accepting whatever insults the authorities had for them. They knew the law was not on their side, they couldn't do anything. Interestingly, the authorities usually didn't do anything to Raju. Probably because they took pity on him because of his leg. But there was one time when a new official had come and he took away Raju's cart. We saw it and we rushed down to see whether we could help him. Raju was standing there smiling, but there were tears in his eyes and the vans had left by then. We all gave Raju some money because even we knew there was nothing we could do legally. I mean he used to set up shop and sell food right next to a busy traffic light. But to our great amazement, Raju was back with the cart the very next day. So I went down and I asked him how much did he have to pay? Nothing. He paid nothing. His cart had been taken out by the strong man of Islam. So I got deeply interested and over the next few days I found out everything I could about the strong man from Raju. It is a typical story of the rise of a criminal turned politician. According to Raju, this man helped everyone in the slum especially when it came to their run-ins with authorities. Raju claimed that this strong man who I will call Mr. Bahubali had once beaten a goon to death in broad daylight. The goon used to apparently collect hafta from the shops in their basti and Mr. Bahubali had ended that. Now Raju had himself not seen that happen nor did he personally know anyone who had seen it either. It had happened long ago. And I think it was most likely just a myth built up to create an aura around this man. Mr. Bahubali provided other services as well but these had to be paid for. He controlled the unlicensed water tankers which came to the slum every morning. It was the only source of water for the people living there. And Mr. Bahubali knew it so he charged a hefty sum for each bucket full that he sold. He also controlled electricity supply done completely illegally by tapping into a high voltage cable that passed on over the slum. Again there was a monthly fee for this. Mr. Bahubali also owned a few Kirana shops inside the slum. Everyone had to buy from them or else his men would give subtle threats to anyone who got groceries from elsewhere. Now he apparently also owned several tenements and collected rent from migrant labourers who worked there. Raju himself paid him rent. He lived in one of the tenements owned by Mr. Bahubali. But his real operation according to Raju was an illegal desi liquor business which he ran from deep inside the ghetto. Mr. Bahubali was extremely popular among the slum dwellers. Raju for instance I could make out worshiped him. Mind you he admitted that he was also very scared of him and would never cross him. So understandably Mr. Bahubali was deep into party politics. He would arrange neighborhood meetings for the ruling party during elections and Raju said he would have definitely been selected to fight the municipality elections had the political wins not changed around that time. Now what made this Mr. Bahubali so powerful? Such criminal politicians exist precisely because there's such a large number of people in India who exist on the margins of what we consider to be legal. They are the Raju's of the world. Their life depends on everyday legalities, breaking rules. They make a living on the roadside where no one is supposed to stop. They live on public land in unauthorized colonies. They spend their nights out in the open under the various flyovers that run across our cities. They're constantly at loggerheads with the authorities getting humiliated pushed around and these Bahubalis protect them. They ensure that even those without proper documents who don't even know which year they were born are recognized by the state and given access to the government's welfare schemes. The Bahubalis organize protests and sit-ins and force the authorities to give some sort of relief like recognizing an unauthorized settlement for instance or like in this case forcing the cops to return a confiscated cart. And this makes them both notorious and popular at the same time. Local authorities come to an understanding with them and look the other way when they indulge in their criminal acts. Political parties cultivate them because they can bring a lot of votes. That is precisely how Mr Bahubali of my story became both a crime lord and a popular politician. And I don't know what happened to him after the political landscape changed in 2014. He might have switched sides and continued to rise but I think what is most likely to have happened is that he lost power and a rival took over the entire landscape of crime and power over which he used to rule. This is what happens to all such strongmen who rise on the back of the marginalized. When they get too close to a particular regime of power a particular party they also fall when that regime falls. But politicians lose power through a formal constitutional system. The strongmen allied to them get their power from outside this formal system so that demise also takes place usually outside the system, outside the domain of law. This is the story of all strongmen whether it is a small-timer like Mr Bahubali of the story or a big mafia don like Atik Ahmed. They rise and they fall and others take their place. It never ends. If you like this video show your love by pressing the like button. 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