God Won'T Leave The Sand-Miners Unpunished Poem by Rajendran Muthiah

Don’t disturb the cyclic processes,
going on since the birth of this earth.
The river sand mining contractors
take home just 150000 million rupees
in a year, paying 1880 million rupees
to the exchequer of the State Government
for issuing license to them for mining the sand.
They pay Rs.1248/= per truckload to government
and sell it for Rs.7500/= to people without bills.
They may pay tax for a pittance after availing
the usual tax deductions as guided by the auditors.
They also maintain stockyards on river banks
with the connivance of the officers
who compromise with the ruling politicos.
Otherwise they will be shifted at once to hills
or the areas infected with diseases.

The government sets up monitoring committees
without staff members to watch
if illegal quarrying is going on.
Neither there were contractors in the past
nor the lakhs of realtors. Thanks to them,
the fertile lands are gleaming with flats of beauty!
The price of a truckload of sand multiplied ten times
after the government stepped in this business.
Some begging brutes of the parties serve as
surrogates to ministers with unbridled powers.
They dare to murder the honest officers
by running the lorries over them. In riverbeds
and in beaches, sand and minerals are stolen in bulk
to pollute the environment with resolute arrogance.
They arrogate to rob the sand from the areas
for which they wouldn’t have got licence.
The sand miners surpass the smugglers
in enlarging their coffers of black money
and making a coffin for the economy of the nation.

Money changes from the hands of the people
to those of contractors and from them
to the stained hands of those in the government.
The government gives in the form of freebies to people
for more than the amount permitted in the budget.
There are sycophants to pay tributes to the corrupt
in Cable Televisions and other media.
People of a village can’t use the sand
in the dry riverbeds around to build small houses.
They have to bring lorryloads of sand
from the Cauvery riverbed some 200 kms away.
God alone can punish these daylight robbers.