In our busy lives, we apparently miss a lot of details that could give us a better understanding of this world around us.

Sometime ago, I overheard a teenager bargaining with a woman (who was a prostitute). Near Shadipur Metro Station, we could see them lined up and waiting for their patrons.

This boy, was a hard bargainer and wouldn’t settle for the amount quoted. Quite businessmanlike, he would honour the contract once the deal is sealed.

And he would proceed to pay with the bank notes printed in the Reserve Bank of India - notes that carry a sovereign guarantee that its value will be honoured. How strange that it could be used to buy sex from this hapless woman?

Purchasing power that flows out of the money you hold is indeed a form of power. No doubt, the state puts that power in the hands of each one of us. Now, if one of us could purchase a woman/man’s most private posessions with this money, how responsible is the state for this loss?

I see that you are worried about the fiscal policies, current account deficit and the ensuing devaluation of rupee, inflation and erosion of purchasing power. But such tightly controlled fiscal policy has this unforeseen side-effect - of this boy being able to ‘purchase’ sex out of this women (Of whom we have failed to feed, cloathe and skill so that she could live a dignified life).

Purchase in most cases is a euphemism for coersion. Now you don’t have to be Marxist or some shade of extreme leftist to see this pattern. Our plates were still full whem more than 3,50,000 farmers committed suicide between 2002 and 2014. The same banknotes bought us food while they were forced into oblivion in a not so kind credit situation.

It would be easy to indict the state when we could forever evade with complacency. This authority of the state flows from us. Don’t you see that the Indian Constitution starts with the words, “We, the people of India…”?

And with that authority, we print bank notes with which that person could force sex out of a woman.

There was certainly in their stories a lesson for those who possess minds (Quran Yoosuf 12:111)

In image : Universal Prostitution by gromyko.