An old (but still cur­rent) news story from India never gained much atten­tion out­side of the coun­try, but seems worth sharing.

For over thirty years, cor­rup­tion and bribery have allowed peo­ple to declare oth­ers ‘dead’ — with­out for­mal evi­dence — thus allow­ing the claimant to take own­er­ship of the deceased’s farm­ing land. The newly ‘dead’ will usu­ally know noth­ing of their pass­ing until they have some for­mal inter­ac­tion with a gov­ern­ment ser­vice, where they will be told that they are dead and are there­fore not enti­tled to the service.

One such vic­tim, who was offi­cially dead for 18 years, formed The Asso­ci­a­tion of the Dead to raise aware­ness of the issue: “The Asso­ci­a­tion seeks to reverse the dec­la­ra­tions, call atten­tion to the prob­lem and pre­vent oth­ers from being exploited in sim­i­lar fash­ion.”

When was the last time you had to check if you were dead?