Black Bombay: the Travel Racket
Following is a gleaning from Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts.
Pop star Madonna and her husband Guy Ritchie, wearing a cap, visit Mumbai’s Ambedkarnagar slums on Tuesday. Author Gregory David Roberts, (behind Madonna) who spent a long time in the slums, showed them around.
The travel racket, he explained, was an especially lucrative part of the currency trade. It involved large numbers of people from the millions of Indians who worked in Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Muscat, Bahrain, Kuwait, and elsewhere throughout the Arab Gulf. The Indian workers, employed on contracts for three, six, or twelve months as domestics, cleaners, and laborers, were usually paid in foreign currency.
Most of the workers tried to exchange their wages on the black market as soon as they got back to India, in order to gain a few extra rupees. Khader’s mafia council offered the employers and the workers a short-cut. When they sold their foreign currencies in bulk to Khaderbhai, the Arab employers received a slightly more favorable rate, allowing them to pay their workers in rupees, at the black-market rate, in India. That left then with a surplus of rupees, and gave them a net profit from paying their workers.
For many Gulf State employers, the temptation to such currency crime was irresistible. They too, had caches of undeclared, un-taxed money under their opulent beds, Syndicates developed to organize the payment of India guest workers in rupees when they returned to India.
The workers were happy because they got the black-market rate but didn’t have to negotiate with hard-nosed black market dealers personally.
The bosses were happy because they made profits from payment through their syndicates.
The black marketers were happy because a steady stream of dollars, Deutschmarks, riyals, and dirhams flowed into the river of demand created by Indian business travelers.
Only the government missed out, and no-one in the thousands upon thousands of people involved in the trade shamed himself beyond endurance on that account.
‘I.. this whole business was once something of a specialty with me…, Khaled said, when that long first lesson finally ended. His voice trailed off, and I couldn’t be certain whether he was reminiscing or simply reluctant to talk further. I waited.
‘When I was studying, in New York,’ he went on at last,’ I was working on a thesis..Well, I wrote a thesis, on un-organized trade in the ancient world. It’s an area that my mother was researching, before the ’67 war. When I was a kid, she got me interested in the black markets of Assyria, Akkad, and Sumer, and how they related to trade routes, and taxes, and the empires that built up around them. When I started it myself, I called it Black Babylon.’
‘It’s catchy title.’
He fired a glance at me to reassure himself that I wasn’t mocking him.
‘I mean it,’ I said quickly, wanting to put him at ease because I was beginning to like him. ‘I think it’s a good topic for a thesis, and it’s a very catchy title. I think you should go ahead and finish it.’
He smiled again.
‘Well, Lin, life has lot of surprises, and, as my uncle in New York used to say, most of them ain’t happy ones for a working stiff. Now I’m working for a black market, instead of working on one. Now, it’s Black Bombay.
Shantaram. A literary masterpiece… it has the grit and pace of a thriller. Daily Telegraph
Gregory David Roberts was born in Melbourne in 1952, After surviving the events dealt with Shantaram, he was captured in Germany in 1990 and eventually extradited to Australia. On completing his prison sentence, he established a small multi-media company and is now a full time writer. He lives in Melbourne
"Once, while I was in Mumbai, a friend(Malathi Kembhavi) of a friend of mine (Anita Lewis) took trouble to take me to her favourite bookshop in Bombay. Shantaram is one of the dozen of books she encouraged me to buy." bunpeiris
Following is a gleaning from Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts.
The travel racket, he explained, was an especially lucrative part of the currency trade. It involved large numbers of people from the millions of Indians who worked in Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Muscat, Bahrain, Kuwait, and elsewhere throughout the Arab Gulf. The Indian workers, employed on contracts for three, six, or twelve months as domestics, cleaners, and laborers, were usually paid in foreign currency.
Most of the workers tried to exchange their wages on the black market as soon as they got back to India, in order to gain a few extra rupees. Khader’s mafia council offered the employers and the workers a short-cut. When they sold their foreign currencies in bulk to Khaderbhai, the Arab employers received a slightly more favorable rate, allowing them to pay their workers in rupees, at the black-market rate, in India. That left then with a surplus of rupees, and gave them a net profit from paying their workers.
For many Gulf State employers, the temptation to such currency crime was irresistible. They too, had caches of undeclared, un-taxed money under their opulent beds, Syndicates developed to organize the payment of India guest workers in rupees when they returned to India.
The workers were happy because they got the black-market rate but didn’t have to negotiate with hard-nosed black market dealers personally.
The bosses were happy because they made profits from payment through their syndicates.
The black marketers were happy because a steady stream of dollars, Deutschmarks, riyals, and dirhams flowed into the river of demand created by Indian business travelers.
Only the government missed out, and no-one in the thousands upon thousands of people involved in the trade shamed himself beyond endurance on that account.
‘I.. this whole business was once something of a specialty with me…, Khaled said, when that long first lesson finally ended. His voice trailed off, and I couldn’t be certain whether he was reminiscing or simply reluctant to talk further. I waited.
‘When I was studying, in New York,’ he went on at last,’ I was working on a thesis..Well, I wrote a thesis, on un-organized trade in the ancient world. It’s an area that my mother was researching, before the ’67 war. When I was a kid, she got me interested in the black markets of Assyria, Akkad, and Sumer, and how they related to trade routes, and taxes, and the empires that built up around them. When I started it myself, I called it Black Babylon.’
‘It’s catchy title.’
He fired a glance at me to reassure himself that I wasn’t mocking him.
‘I mean it,’ I said quickly, wanting to put him at ease because I was beginning to like him. ‘I think it’s a good topic for a thesis, and it’s a very catchy title. I think you should go ahead and finish it.’
He smiled again.
‘Well, Lin, life has lot of surprises, and, as my uncle in New York used to say, most of them ain’t happy ones for a working stiff. Now I’m working for a black market, instead of working on one. Now, it’s Black Bombay.
Shantaram. A literary masterpiece… it has the grit and pace of a thriller. Daily Telegraph
Gregory David Roberts was born in Melbourne in 1952, After surviving the events dealt with Shantaram, he was captured in Germany in 1990 and eventually extradited to Australia. On completing his prison sentence, he established a small multi-media company and is now a full time writer. He lives in Melbourne
"Once, while I was in Mumbai, a friend(Malathi Kembhavi) of a friend of mine (Anita Lewis) took trouble to take me to her favourite bookshop in Bombay. Shantaram is one of the dozen of books she encouraged me to buy." bunpeiris
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