Is Corruption Crime or Culture?

A week ago, while I was watching some news channel, I came across a story of a Panchayat Development Officer (PDO), who was tortured to the extent of pain of hell for exhibiting honesty. The PDO was opposing to sign the fake bills for sanctioning the amount that the village panchayat members were asking to sign, as the work has not commenced yet. The PDO is an in charge of development activities in a panchayat, appointed by the government. He is the one who has to channelize the funds for proper infrastructural works in villages, accumulated through several developmental schemes that the government has introduced and implemented.  

  

I was thinking that at one side we are fighting for a strong Anti Corruption bill in favor of countrymen and on the other hand we are willing to live in the same drain. Isn’t it mockery of our democracy? We have lots of laws and government bodies to safe guard the principles of the constitution, but, still every day we hear such cases in the society. Doesn't it point us to the nexus of people in government, bureaucrats and the influential people in the community who are involved from top to bottom? Anybody who is against this system is odd in the group and that person has to pay for his honesty and integrity throughout his life. 

Such circumstances pose a serious question that is “Is Corruption a Crime or Culture”? Yes, we have to seek answer for this. There is lot of difference between Crime and Culture and for this question the whole society has to respond with their views. It is Crime when few people involved in such activity of nepotism and the rest of the society feels it's a punishable crime. But, it becomes Culture when the whole society is involved in it (being active or passive) and nobody is ashamed of getting involved. It becomes difficult to root out something when it becomes Culture. It feels like culture when the perpetrator is left unpunished due to loop-holes in the system. It is dangerous attitude, and the penalty could be un-imaginable.

There is another reason behind doubting that the act of corruption is a crime or culture. Every one of us agrees that corruption is not one sided activity. Always there will be minimum two parties involved. One who receives the bribe and the other one is who receives the favor. In many cases the officer/authoritarian will ask the money for helping the other party in need. But, now-a-days, on the other hand the person, who is getting the favor, is himself willing to give bribe. It could be for lawful or illegal support or for fast tracking the work or for fulfilling his desire without delay. What do you call this?

Either an officer in government office asking for signing a file or a politician selling acres of land of poor farmers to the companies for simple favors and bribes, all these are due to fearlessness, shameless attitude, least respect to law, egotism of money, arrogance of authority, disrespect to society, no fear of getting sentenced, fearless of God.

Let us take an instance to better understand our conscious or unconscious contribution in this entire episode. Say at last moment you have decided to visit a pilgrimage on a long week-end waiting on the corner of this week, along with your family. Now, you need a train ticket where as the waiting list is already hitting a number above 100. But you are not ready to go back and revisit your travel plan. Then you opt for tatkal. On the day when the tatkal counter opens for your travel date, you were still sleeping. By the time you get-up and surf the reservation site and book, all the tickets were sold out. Then you search for an agent, as if he is God and buy the same tickets from him by paying triple the amount of travel fair. But still not ready to postpone the trip, because, you have your own 100s of reasons for not postponing it by a week. On the other hand, a poor person who has to take his pregnant wife to his native, and has a genuine reason for last minute decision has to pay the same amount as the ticket agent is least bothered about personal problems than the money. And fools like us are ready to pay them. Isn’t it corruption?

In similar way, we have messed up several things. It is not the power which introduced corruption in lower levels rather it is people/upper class and upper middle class who are more responsible for introducing it, I believe.  Poor and lower middle class are put to suffer by the actions of the other upper class. Now, it is the whole society which has to face the hardship and the consequences of it. Take any section or department that deals with people, it is the same situation. Think of getting a driving license, ration card, gas connection, property registration, and evade penalty for traffic rule violation, getting a mining contract. Anything and everything is under the clutches of few people, who are part of self-surrendered system. Now it has grown to the extent of giant. 

The reasons for this giant to become so powerful are as discussed it is our comforts, favors and thoughtless actions, our valueless behavior, our carelessness, our laziness. Now, it is not the corruption, which is our problem, but, rather it is corrupt mind/moral corruption. Dealing a corrupt mind is very difficult than dealing corruption directly, as it will nullify all the efforts to overcome the situation. Corrupt mind coupled with the fear of defeat, loosing comfort zone and laziness will try to setback and re-think on every step taken towards eradicating corruption. 

In this scenario, who will take on this giant and how? It is the society, who has messed-up things, so, obviously the same society has to take the charge of cleaning the garbage it has created. It is not easy to handle all the things at once. It is the collective, sustained and time bound effort, which will lead to success. Nothing is possible unless we think it is possible at first instance. Rest, the positive thinking will do the magic.

Just thought of quoting few beautiful lines, summarizing the whole point that each one of us have read or heard or experienced or have come across at some point of our life, but newer took a step ahead, except cribbing.  

“When we change something in a painting, we don't only change that something, we change the whole thing. The whole painting changes. So, if I am changing myself, the whole universe must change. And that is what philosophy says, that is what religions have preached: change yourself and the universe changes. But if you try to change that, you cannot make a duck into a peacock. Isn't it? So the secret of universal change is to change yourself.”

Let us change ourselves; I mean change the negativity about the result. Come out of moral corruption and take little steps, then we will definitely come out of this social evil, which has twisted to be a culture from crime. It is thoughts and simple actions based on those thoughts are the reason for the existence of today’s evolution. So, that same thing lays the confidence for further change in the right direction.

-- K. Kalyan