Friday, October 22, 2010

When it’s fair, its free !!!

Before the writer in me dies a sad demise, let me give ‘writing’ another try. That would summarise the fact that I have not written anything since months. And how would I? After all, it was my emotion that was put into words. Now, the emotional self has met its end, the same way ‘the good boy’ in me has suffocated to an untimely death. That left the writer in me yearning for content. Words I had but I lacked the matter, something that was quite contrary in the past.
The dying writer mumbled, “doesn’t matter if there’s no content, write anything. Use the words, else they will leave you. Don’t let the only form of expression left with you leave you.” And here I am, trying to write rubbish.
Okay, let us talk about a deep-rooted social evil called ‘corruption’. It’s actually a moral evil which has become a social evil because of its wide and deep reach into the society. While politicians are corrupt to the core, the bureaucracy too is deeply laden with this shit. The corporate world which started off neatly, too couldn’t keep the face clean. Scams and scandals have become a daily news item.
Years back, when I was in school, I once had to write an essay on corruption. I very well remember how, sitting in the exam hall, I tried to recollect the names of various scams I had heard about. And the best part of the day was the feeling at the end of the exam that my essay would help to attenuate the level of corruption. Sounds ridiculous today, doesn’t it? Since then, this has been a constant bugging news-piece. It’s as if I grew in a corrupt framework, conditioned by the society that permitted alarmingly high acceptance level. A mute spectator to the corrupt system, my questions always met the answer ‘aisa hi system hai, kya karoge’. At times before I went to sleep, I used to wonder ‘can’t we be ideal? Is honesty really utopian? Why can’t corruption be erased? and all the rubbish like shooting all the corrupt politicians after making them stand in a queue. These thoughts were followed by slumber which was again followed by the stories of corruption in the morning’s newspaper. And I guess most of the people of my generation have been nurtured by the same corrupt society in their formative years. No wonder more than half of the youth today very much resembles the character of Siddharth in the first half of the movie Rang De Basanti.
Today, I am a part of the same bureaucracy I myself blamed so furiously. And I have come to know that it’s really pretty difficult to weed out corruption from the system. Being an insider now, I can see the evil from real close quarters. And every day, some new façade of corruption comes before my eyes. Those who are really clean and honest, are painted black by the corrupt majority and dragged into the system forcibly. In such scenario, it really becomes difficult to stick to your honest stand. More than half of the accused booked under vigilance cases are really honest while the actual culprits bribe the anti-corruption squad and roam free, with a clean image. A staff of my concern had his name in headlines of the local news dailies as ‘corrupt official demanding bribe’ as the contractors and other people in the system had problems in their corrupt dealings because of his honesty. I overheard a guy who passed in a promotional exam, saying ‘when it’s fair, its free unlike last time when I failed as I paid only 10K against the standard of 20K’. The very next day I overheard another guy saying ‘the dealing clerk is taking money in the name of his officer’. You do good, and you will be painted bad while those who actually do bad hardly come to the fore. The most shocking part was coming across the ‘system of fixed cuts per chair’. I had heard of it since years but saw it today only when the offered cut pertained to the chair I hold. I came to know that people right from the clerks to the highest official have fixed percentages, the figure varying from 0.1 % to 4 %. Though I declined, I very well knew that this wouldn’t allow me to work on my own, as people above me were part of the shit too. And this is the reason why budding talents get absorbed into the dishonest sea and become a part of it. Not always is the titillation inviting, at times you are coerced into the sea too.
The other sectors too are not much different. Difference in the figures shown in the salary slip and the actual wage is pretty common. More than half of the tickets of movies are blacked. Instances are numerous. And counting them would only lead to a heightened frustration.
But it’s not that the problem doesn’t have a solution. The solution lies in our conscience. The conscience does warn the body before every ill-deed. It’s just that the greed overpowers the conscience for most of the people. Let us hear our conscience more often. Cleaning of the mud-laden system is feasible only when each of us remains honest to the core. And I believe it’s not impossible. We just need to rate moral gains higher than the mortal gains. Let us join hands for this cause. And remember, together we can.

1 comment:

Sumit said...

Wonderful! If every person in the system thinks like you then the whole problem of corruption will be addressed. But in a civilisation turning Godless you can't expect white collars since everything boils down to the issue of self interest (more accurately-selfishness).