The Perfect Crime

Those who know me would say that I am a fairly normal, typical sort of chap. Not completely uninteresting, but not the life and soul of the party that everyone is queuing up to get to know. 

 

Funnily enough, one of the fantasies of my growing up years was that of strange and mysterious women walking up to me and whispering that they would like to get to know me. The real me. Truth be told though, I’ve always felt that life has mostly been characterised by a lack of any genuine effort in this direction. Till recently…

 

Over the last decade or so, I must confess, there has been a clamour for getting to know me. Yes, clamour, no other word for it. I would be the first to admit that this interest does not emanate from strange and mysterious women. If pushed, I would even go on to concede that it does not emanate from women at all. And before you go off getting ideas, it is not from men, or indeed anyone in the spectrum between these two genders.

 

No, it is from sundry institutions like banks, assorted service providers, random government departments and the like. And it is called KYC, or Know Your Customer! And this appetite to know me through the KYC was initially quite gratifying, even if it came from inanimate entities. At some stage, one takes what one gets. And though the process of their getting to know me better largely comprised a bunch of photocopies of various documents autographed by me, I must confess that I complied with the same level of alacrity I would have shown if strange and mysterious women had asked me out for a coffee. I was just happy that someone or something was finally showing some interest in getting to know me.

 

As it inevitably happens though, I must confess that the early euphoria has since worn off to be replaced by a sort of dangerously simmering resentment that could easily get set off and lead to serious and violent crime one of these days …

 

Here’s why… 

 

In the first few years of the KYC era, as I said before, I used to appreciate my bank’s efforts to get to know me. A bank may be a poor substitute for strange and mysterious women, but at some point you welcome inbound interest from any quarter. However, over time it struck me that their thirst for knowledge about me was becoming insatiable and possibly addictive. They would want me to fill out a KYC every time I asked for something. 

 

Want a demat account? Here, fill out this KYC. 

Want to open an FD? Same!

Want a credit card? Same, same, same!!!

 

Soon, they started asking for a fresh KYC for the same account. Apparently, this has to be redone every few years. What the hell?? They already know me, why would they want to go through the effort of acquiring the same knowledge again? OK, I can even concede that my address may have changed and they want to be updated, but wanting to know my father’s name all over again? 

 

The human being is susceptible to any amount of conditioning, so even this would have been grudgingly acceptable if further layers of complexity were not piled on. But in a cruel twist, the number of agencies that are suddenly seeking intimate knowledge of you is multiplying. From banks, the disease has spread to the telecom service provider and other assorted government and private agencies. And here’s the problem – different people have different approaches to getting to know someone. Some people would prefer doing it in a coffee shop. Some would like to do it over dinner. Some at home, some in the work environment. And this diversity of knowledge-seeking behaviours has similarly resulted in each KYC coming with different needs. So in some cases the Aadhar is OK, but for some it is the passport. In yet others the ration card is the only route to getting to know you. The perverse ones even have dynamic combinations of these documents which keep changing. And alongwith, the two passport size photographs which have to be signed but cannot because the ink will never stay on the glossy paper.

 

I recently had to do a KYC again because I had loaded the Aadhar document without blanking out the first 8 numbers. Really? So, you want a document but the key information there needs to be hidden?! How would you feel if you apply for a Singapore visa and their embassy tells you to resubmit the form but with a passport size photograph where you wear large, dark sunglasses and a false beard? And in any case, this train has left the station. After the insane number of KYCs that I have gone through, my Aadhar number and attested copy has already been disseminated far and wide. Any crook worth his salt will take about 2 minutes to locate my Aadhar number!

 

I’ve often pondered over how this all came to be. Initially, I speculated that this could be the work of a paranoid system that is trying to ensure that money launderers, infiltrators and terrorists do not get access to our financial and other systems, but I soon junked this idea. The KYC seemed too blunt an instrument to prevent such sophisticated scoundrels from doing their stuff. Somewhat like those electrified tennis rackets that we use for the purpose of eradicating mosquitos from the face of the earth… 

 

I must shamefully admit that once, in a weak moment, I also evaluated the possibility of this KYC exercise to be rooted in genuine motives of protecting the consumer. That thought lasted for about all of 5 seconds before the absurdity of it hit me and I almost choked with laughter at my own naivety.

 

And then, serendipitously, I chanced across a passage from The Old Testament. This one…

 

Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, “I have gotten a man with the help of the LORD.” – Genesis 4:1:

 

And the penny dropped. They wanted to know the customer, not for the purposes of identification, authentication or even in a social sense. It was solely in a biblical sense!

 

I can almost picture that fatal day many years ago when an irate, old school mandarin of the RBI came to work ranting about life and how bank customers were increasingly becoming aware and getting above themselves, asking for better service, quicker response times and ridiculous things of that nature. Continuing the retrocognition, I can see the man, thinking long and hard and ultimately, informing his juniors triumphantly, “No more. Let’s not take any more of this  bullshit. Let’s know the customer. Let’s know them like they’ve never been known before.” And thus was born the KYC…

 

And this cunning instrumentality rapidly gained currency through an army of bank officers who were smarting under the stress of dealing with an increasingly demanding customer. The temptation to know their customers without crossing any civil or criminal red lines was too much to resist. 

 

You can guess what happened next. The beleaguered blokes over at TRAI, who were equally under siege during the “customer is king” era, figured out what was happening and joined the party. KYC for mobile connections followed. And soon, it was a free for all. Know Your Customer became some kind of a primeval cry of defiance from boardrooms across the country..

 

Obviously the RBI fellows, having pioneered the circus, wanted to be ahead of the curve. Worthy successors of the original RBI mandarin devised schemes where the KYC had to be renewed frequently. “Why stop with just one? Let’s know them again and again! Let’s know them whenever we feel like. And let’s know them all over again whenever they approach us for anything. Let the fun never set in our banks!!”

 

So there it is. I myself have resigned to the KYC as a small price to pay to ensure my already tenuous links with my money, my investments and my insurance policy are not severed. For those of you who are feeling vexed and sore with the whole thing, I would strongly advise you to weigh the pros and cons; you will realize that resistance is futile. 

 

Like I said, demanding to know you through a KYC is not a legal offense. Come to think of it, it’s pretty much the perfect crime…