Amit Gupta
” Weneed to create systems which can fight against corruption and not individuals who fight against systems promoting corruption”
…….Anonymous
In the recent report of transparency International regarding corruptions perception index 2016,India ranks 79 out of 176 countries with an average score of 40 with a scale of 0 (highly corrupt) and 100 (very clean). India further dropped 03 ranks from its previous position of 76 out of 168 countries as per previous report of Transparency International for the year 2015. Denmark stands 1st with CPI scores of 90 in corruptions perception index 2016.As per the report. “India’s ongoing poor performance with a score of 40 reiterates the state’s inability to effectively deal with petty corruption as well as large-scale corruption scandals. The impact of corruption on poverty, illiteracy and police brutality shows that not only the economy is growing – but also inequality”. The corruption occupies an important and key determining factor in our society which everybody knows is bad, but closes his/her eye when it comes to understanding its ramifications and implications. The strong urge for status, easy money, comforts, luxuries coupled with monetary/ psychological/ social factors makes an individual inclined towards this social evil in the society. Lack of moral education, ethics, failure of joint family systems, lust for power and resources are some of the other factors contributing towards further strengthening this evil in the society. Rampant Corruption in a society results in lack of transparency, unfair and unequal distribution of amenities/ other resources and lack of proper competition and improper opportunities among the masses and general public. This creates ruckus, anarchy, biasness and segregation among individuals resulting in disintegration of the moral and ethical values imbibed in a fair and transparent society.
The individuals who are fair and transparent in dealings, in these corrupt systems, are made to fight against systematic corrupt mechanisms and more often made to pay for their honest deeds in terms of denial of service benefits, harassment in the department and public sphere, social embarrassments, tagging of in-efficiency etc. This finally reflects in their family life in terms of psychological insecurities, threats from social systems, becoming an easy target for the corrupt bosses and their subordinates. Most of the systems are defined in a way to breed corrupt and powerful and discourages the genuine and honest, in highly corrupt societies, which is contrary to the very clean societies wherein the systems and mechanisms are defined in such a way that they can easily identify and immediately shunt out the corrupt individuals. There systems fight against the negligible corrupt individuals whereas here individuals fight against the corrupt systems which are full of nepotism, illegal money and illegal power.
The possible loopholes are intentionally kept in the service delivery mechanisms prevalent in various organizations, to ensure lack of transparency, delayed response, individual arrogance coupled with lots of discretionary powers at the hand of employers and managers to achieve their ill deeds which ultimately favoursand promote corruption, nepotism, red-tapism in the society. In the backdrop of these, individuals pledge to make our society corruption free is the need of hour.
Sincere efforts are required at Governmental and society level to imbibe the values of morality, ethics and honesty at various levels which include organizing periodical effective anti-corruption campaigns at different levels, imparting moral education, cultural values and professional ethics to the students at school level by making it part of their educational curriculums etc. Systems need to be re-defined in a way that transparency and equal opportunities be provided to all the individuals irrespective of caste, creed, colour and religion in our society. The honest need to be rewarded for their acts and their works/ conduct be exemplified among others. They need to be protected and given prominence at all levels so that other individuals can imitate them. All out efforts are required at various levels in the Government in particular and society in general, in order to curb this evil and secure a place among the top corruption free / very clean countries of the world. We need to have short term and long term vision documents at the Government level for achieving the systemic changes in our organizations at public and private level to get the desired results.
( The author is presently posted as SSP Vigilance Poonch-Rajouri-Reasi Wing in Vigilance Organization,J&K and this article is in continuation to the earlier article published in Daily Excelsior on 31/12/2016)
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