Kochi is a place full of people on the make, both legal and illegal, both feel good and badass. There are, of course, hustlers and scammers who put together plans from the smallest scale to the largest take, who might sell you a broken water gun through the window of your car as you wait at a red light, or, at the other end, those who might give a government contract to one of their cronies well below market rates and with the complicity of the entire state. In other words, it can be ‘corrupt’ when you come from Australia, where the government works in a different way. This is not to say that most people don’t do the right thing, or that avoiding taxes in some way, shape or form, is not a practice in other places, but that India feels anarchic and rigged when it comes to money and business. 

This is why you need a fixer. A guy to stand in line, a guy to hand out bribes, a guy who sets things up and sorts it all out so that you only need to show up. Invariably, they are men. They are the guys with multiple phones and oily hair, who are grafting and working hard for a little bit of cream off the top, who use guile and skill as their way to making a deal. Many of them live by their wits alone, and given how capital is concentrated here, that means being at the mercy of the boss or the handshake itself. A fixer though is, above anything else, a type of personality. He is an entrepreneur in a worker’s body. He is a confidence player who knows how to work the angles and maximise the returns. He is the one who can make a profit from thin air, who can talk his way into a meeting and out of a contract. He not only gets things done, he makes things happen. In Australia we might easily recognise them as real estate agents, car dealers or stockbrokers, but in India there are fixers at every level of the economy. 

The bigger cities feel like they have more fixers, but that is only because they have more everything, and tourist hotspots attract these people as well. This might account for the visitor’s perception that India is full of hagglers and hassle. In Kerala though, the state is stronger and more transparent than other places. People here are politically engaged and willing to make an effort and contribute, to pay taxes and vote. This might be because of the local strain of politics, which has delivered infrastructure, schools and health second to none on the subcontinent, but it might also be because of the texture, tone and culture that precede a modern incarnation – the hammer as well as the steeple. But the strength of the state, the relative equality of incomes and the easy going pace, do not mean that one cannot find a fixer. Fixers are everywhere.  

One fixer, Renji, is a rickshaw driver by day, but he is also on the lookout for any opportunity that comes his way. The fixer is a guy who always knows a guy, and Renji knows a lot of guys. He knows guys for bikes, he know guys for couches, he knows guys for food, he knows guys for plants, he knows guys who can get us gas bottles even when they have run out. He knows, in other words, all the guys you need to know so you can set up your house. When I met Renji this is what he told me: 

I wasn’t always a rickshaw driver. I was studying bachelor of commerce when my father died. I am the eldest and needed to look after my family so I became a motorcycle salesman. I was working there for eight years, seven days a week. I liked that job, but it was quite far, maybe one and a half hours one way. When my wife had our daughter I wanted to spend more time with them, so I bought my rickshaw on loan and I have been doing this for two years.    

Rickshaw drivers here are literate and many know how to run a successful business, but what makes Renji different is how educated he is. You can tell straight away that he is cut from different cloth – articulate, energetic, ready to make things happen. When demonetisation happened, he came to my house to let me know that I can count on him if I am having issues. He knows a guy who knows a guy who can swap my 500 and 1000 rupee notes at a reasonable rate.  

His take on the issue is that it will be a short-term difficulty that is borne by poorer people who don’t have bank accounts or who are unable to exchange the money they have saved under their mattress. But this will be offset by the damage done to corruption. This is the official narrative that Prime Minister Modi would want us all to believe. But, being a fixer, Renji is also not so naïve as to think that the bosses at the top won’t find a way to get away with anything they want. This is not idle conspiracy theory, but borne out by the fact that 34% of federal parliamentarians are facing criminal charges. Renji though is a nationalist, a proud Indian, and so it is Russians in Goa who have come in on private planes with suitcases of gold, cocaine and ‘girls’ who are causing the real trouble. Demonetisation though, this change to the 500 and 1000 rupee notes, will make a dent in the dark economy even as they can take their cash offshore. And yet he sees no irony in the fact that he himself is trying to open up business in cash exchange that substitute new notes for old at below face value. That is just a little cream off the top – what harm can that do? That is what it means to be a fixer, to be a guy who can make the most of any situation he finds himself in, even the one right now.