The slow poison we have all learned to swallow

Maj Gen Sanjeev Dogra (Retd)

sanjeev662006@gmail.com

There was a time when the word adulteration belonged exclusively to the marketplace. We understood it as milk diluted with water, artificial colour bleeding into turmeric, or cheaper oil masquerading as pure ghee. It was a consumer issue. Someone compromised a product to make a little more money, and we, the buyers, paid the price.

But look around you today. The word has escaped the kitchen. It has seeped into every corner of our existence, and perhaps we have become so accustomed to its presence that we no longer flinch.

We worry about what we eat, yes. But we also drive over roads that crumble within a season. We read reports of newly constructed bridges developing cracks before their inaugural ceremonies have faded from memory. We watch examination paper leaks destroy years of honest preparation by thousands of young people. We send our children to educational institutions where learning has been replaced by marks and coaching-driven performance. And increasingly, we witness institutions drift away from their original purpose, becoming instruments of convenience rather than guardians of principle.

These are different phenomena, yet behind each lies a single troubling question: Why does a person knowingly compromise something whose consequences will eventually be borne by somebody else?

The Problem Is Bigger Than Greed

The simplest explanation is greed. A manufacturer reduces quality to increase margins. A contractor cuts corners to save money. Greed is real and powerful. But greed alone does not adequately explain the phenomenon.

What distinguishes a functioning society is not the absence of self-interest but the existence of boundaries around it. A businessman wants to earn profit, but he knows his product must not harm the consumer. A contractor wants his enterprise to prosper, but the bridge he constructs must safely carry people he will never meet. Civilisation begins precisely where my freedom to pursue my interest ends where serious harm to another person begins.

The troubling question is not why people want more, but why consequences for the other person sometimes cease to matter. Would someone selling adulterated products give the same to his own family? Would an engineer allow his children to use a structure whose safety he had compromised? Probably not.

We remain capable of understanding consequences when the victim has a name and a face. Our moral imagination weakens when the victim is anonymous. The consumer becomes a number. The taxpayer becomes an abstraction. The real adulteration begins when profit remains personal but consequences become somebody else's problem.

When Education Itself Becomes Adulterated

India has expanded schooling and higher education enormously. Yet possessing a degree and being educated are not the same thing. If a technically brilliant engineer compromises structural safety, his problem is not lack of technical knowledge. What is missing is the understanding that knowledge creates responsibility. Much of contemporary education has become transactional. Study to score marks. Clear examinations to enter good institutions. Acquire degrees to secure jobs. Every step is understandable. Yet we have stopped asking: What kind of human being is education producing?

An examination paper leak adulterates two things simultaneously. It adulterates merit. The honest student and the dishonest beneficiary no longer compete on the same ground. But more seriously, it adulterates faith in education itself. Imagine the seventeen-year-old who studies honestly for two years and then discovers that others could purchase the paper. The subconscious lesson can become: perhaps honesty is for those without access to shortcuts. No textbook can easily undo that lesson. A corrupt educational process can damage the value system of an entire generation.

The Adulteration of Public Bodies

Every public institution is created with a mandate to adjudicate fairly, to regulate without bias, to serve without discrimination. Their credibility depends not on whom they please, but on how faithfully they discharge their mandate.

This principle applies regardless of which government is in power. Institutions become truly valuable precisely because leadership changes while institutional principles endure. When any public body permits considerations unrelated to its mandate to influence its functioning, its purity begins to dilute. That dilution may come from external pressure, commercial influence, or institutional complacency.

A weighing scale is valuable because we trust it to weigh every customer equally. The moment we believe it measures differently depending on who stands on it, we stop trusting the scale. Institutions operate on the same principle, and institutional trust is among the most valuable forms of national capital.

A Society Cannot Be Policed Into Being Ethical

The instinctive solution is stronger regulation. Tougher laws. Harsher punishment. All are necessary. But regulation has an obvious limitation. Who will inspect the inspector? If society requires one policeman behind every citizen and another behind every policeman, the system becomes impossibly complex.

Every successful society depends on something that cannot be legislated: character. A person must sometimes refuse to do wrong not because a camera is watching, but because he is watching himself. Integrity prevents an engineer from approving something unsafe when nobody would discover the compromise. Empathy makes a manufacturer imagine the child consuming his product. Professional ethics reminds us that positions carry obligations beyond personal advantage. Conscience establishes the final boundary: I could perhaps get away with it, but I will still not do it.

The Three Classrooms That Shape a Child

Expecting schools alone to solve this would be unfair. Every child attends three classrooms. The family teaches what parents consider right. The school teaches what society says is right. The world outside teaches what appears to succeed.

The third classroom is often the most powerful. If children repeatedly see people becoming successful through manipulation while honest behaviour appears unrewarded, they notice the contradiction. We cannot celebrate wealth without caring how it was acquired and simultaneously expect young people to respect ethical conduct.

Our vocabulary of success needs expansion. Along with asking "What do you want to become?", perhaps we should ask "What kind of person do you want to become?" Along with "How much will you earn?", there should be "What value will you create?"

Perhaps That Is the Real National Challenge

Adulterated food can be detected in a laboratory. A defective bridge can be audited. An examination system can be redesigned. But how do we test whether the value system of a society is becoming adulterated? The symptoms are visible in the compromises we accept. When "chalta hai" replaces excellence. When "sab karte hain" becomes justification. When success disconnects from the means used to achieve it.

No government alone can repair this. No political party can legislate it away. It requires families, institutions, businesses, and citizens to rediscover something indispensable: that our actions carry responsibility towards people we may never know. Perhaps that should become the deeper purpose of education. Not merely producing someone who can crack an examination or maximise profit, but human beings who understand why knowledge and opportunity must be exercised responsibly.

Ultimately, the strength of a country is not measured only by its highways or economy. It is measured by something far less visible: Can one citizen trust another? Can we trust the medicine without knowing the manufacturer? Can a parent trust the examination system with a child's future? Can we cross a bridge without wondering whether somebody compromised the concrete?

If the answer is yes, we have created more than development. We have created social character. And that is where we must begin-not only with better laws and stricter enforcement, but with better education, stronger values, and the quiet conviction that what is wrong does not become right merely because nobody is watching.