Shanti's father and his fellow pirates attack on Buldeo, by pillaging on his house. They're demolishing old houses, wrecking the culture within. They're given a chance to wreck a whole village by Colonel Ernie Price, the fastest milkman in the West.

Ernie Price was definitely behind the op, unseen. He has much more power than either subject, but almost everyone living without science is superstitious and blames the catastrophe on them, because both are scapegoats.

Ernie is too powerful to be blamed, so blaming oversimplified the problem. As if he is deemed 'taxless', he doesn't pay a tax and still didn't give a crap about taxes as such.