We vote to be extorted.

"The last 30 years have seen governments of all ideologies except the Left in Maharashtra. The extortion economy did not suffer," wrote Smruti Koppikar. "The extortion economy's tentacles tap into every aspect of urban life, from street vendors and large industries to the law enforcement agencies and the underworld." The system is known locally as 'hafta vasooli'. "In local parlance, hafta is 'protection  money' paid to a representative of the system in return for pardoning violations or to the mafia for defence against the system. Vasooli is typically 'recovery' of an agreed amount in return for favours -- a host of people with power, including politicians and gangsters could demand it." "It remained unaffected by Prime Minster Narendra Modi's demonetisation in 2016, which was supposed to end black money." If criminals are protected, anyone protesting against the system faces severe punishment. "When I entered Tihar (a prison in Delhi), I was shocked at the level of humiliation one is subjected to," wrote Maoist ideologue Kobad Ghandy. "Here I was, an undertrial, no sentence had been handed down to me, but I faced daily humiliation, worse than that of convicts, who were at least given responsibilities and could move around jail relatively freely." Ghandy was acquitted of the main charge in 2016, after 10 years in various jails. "After the Mumbai blasts, a committee headed by former home secretary N.N. Vohra prepared a report about the nexus between criminals, bureaucrats and politicians. Only 11 pages were made public two years later, of 110-page report submitted in 1993," wrote Shashi Shekhar. Anyone protesting against those in power receive brutal punishment as was handed out to Mazdoor Adhikar Sangathan president Shiv Kumar. Slum dwellers in the city of Bhopal were offered Rs 750 to take a coronavirus vaccine injection. "They say they later discovered from local activists that some of them hadn't been given an approved vaccine and had unwittingly taken part in a clinical trial for India's homegrown vaccine, Covaxin," reported CNN. "The push for Covaxin is tied up in national rhetoric, as India -- already the global leader in vaccine production -- aims to complete an ambitious rollout at home and engage in vaccine diplomacy by exporting Indian-made shots." A US firm has found that so-called evidence on activist Rona Wilson's computer was planted through a malware called NetWire, which is available for $10 online. "The firm said it connected the same attacker to a significant malware infrastructure which had been deployed over the course of approximately four years to not only attack and compromise Wilson's computer for 22 months, but to attack his co-defendants in the Bhima Koregaon case and defendants in other high-profile Indian cases as well." 'If democracy is not merely the holding of free and fair elections, India is no longer a democracy," wrote Prof Kanti Bajpai. "It is pitiless, humourless, and clueless, lashing out periodically to give us the impression of control and purpose." If a lot of Indians are feeling suffocated it is natural that "The overwhelming tone and nature of the international media's coverage of domestic political issues reinforce a narrative that India is turning its back on its democratic, secular, pluralist roots and its open free society is no longer as open and as free," wrote Chanakya. "The government's determination is to identify, talk to and promote those who agree with it. Those who don't agree with it are to be tracked, not to be engaged in dialogue, but to be, as a minister puts it in an awkward and surely unintendedly ominous turn of phrase 'neutralised'," wrote an editorial in The Indian Express. Extortion is official.