Saturday, April 16, 2011
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Corruption in India – Not a cancer, but a gut-microbe
Ever since the year of chills, spills and leaks aka, 2010 has bygone, the 2011 proving to be the year of revolutions. Originated from Tunisia the scent of Jasmine has rocked the governments, presidents and even dictators. The fragrance of Jasmine scent escaped the middle-east and even felt in mainland China, although mildly. During the protests in Egypt, a series of scams were unearthed in India and the common man in India left frustrated. There was a widespread speculation and discussion of having Egyptian style protest in the country.
Now the protests in middle-east were predominantly focused on having transparent government (the so called democracy). In theory the worlds largest democrazy* had that and I personally will testify that, the common man in India does not have an innate ability to step in to the streets and protest without a leader. So no “Jasmine revolution” and the Indians (including myself) were happy with our daily lives and of course the cricket world-cup. Having said that, most of the time there is this one person in India who makes the difference.
Enter; Anna Hazare, that one person who made the difference. A 72-year old social activist of whom I (or most of them) never heard of did a ‘Gandhi’. He just turned back the wheel and showed the world how powerful the idea of ‘Sathyagraha’, that’s the contribution of India to the 2011 revolution. As expected the Government of India responded, I will not discuss the current events more and whether Lokpal bill is useful or not. Rather I will focus on the engine called Corruption.
To me corruption is bad, must be avoided and completely eliminated if possible. Its like saying, diseases are bad, must be avoided and completely eliminated if possible and we all know that’s not possible. Now that I brought the corruption comparing to a disease, is corruption like a cancer as everyone thinks? May be somewhere else in the world, but not in India, in India Corruption is not a cancer, but a gut-microbe.
Everyone who has ever lived in India knows that to get some job done in a Government office has to bribe and most of us have done so. But have you ever paid a bribe personally to an officer or clerk, 90% of the time you will not even meet the official. So how does the bribe works then? It’s the middleman, every office has hoard of them and it’s a thriving profession.
As I mentioned earlier the Corruption in India is like a gut-microbe, an invisible work force slowly churning out the process and helps the engine in working condition. Most of the time the corruption is unnoticed and even helps the individual, but what happens when it is over done is exactly similar to have more microbes in your gut. The result will be quite obvious not only to the individual but to the others. So the scams which were done in large scale were the ones similar to dysentery and cholera quite visible and the obvious ones!
I am not trying to glorify the Corruption here, but an overnight use of antibiotics to eliminate the corruption is going to result in bad situation. It is our responsibility to slowly eliminate the corruption, don’t pay bribe if you can wait or undergo some gruesome process of standing in queue and walking to office several time during working hours. A small level of corruption shall be tolerated in any society, just like gut-microbe. We should be using it for additional purposes not for digesting our daily intake. But our first goal is to eliminate Salmonellas and Vibrios from the society.
* It is not a typo error