It's just other side of the story, the story of corruption, the practice of accepting and offering the bribes and the complete failure in destroying this ever growing monster. I had written an article in this blog few months back regarding Mr. Anna Hazare's movement and the huge support he received, still receiving and how the things have started changing.
I was happy to see that somebody is there who is honest and is ready to fight till his last breath against the corrupt politicians and their corrupt system, he received phenomenal impact on the youth, middle class and elite society in our country. But in last few months I got to see and experience numerous things which made me think to myself. Is that true that only politicians, bureaucrats and all types of government employees including police men are corrupt? And what about us? Are we clean? Or we are just the poor chaps who were forced to bribe and follow these corrupt practices by people of above mentioned categories? If our answer is yes, then we are fooling ourselves. After introspecting ourselves we would find that we too follow such practices which are more or less corrupt in nature.
I would like to share following three incidents which I experienced in last few months.
Incident:-1
It was Saturday afternoon, I was waiting for green light on the street. Suddenly I saw small crowd gathered at the corner of the street. The crowd contained some traffic police men surrounded by small number of people. Those people were caught by policemen while breaking the Red light or violating the no parking area or for not possessing the driving license. The surprising thing was people were trying to offer the bribe to policemen to let them go, they were not willing to pay the fine and accept the receipt and the more surprising thing was the police men were refusing to accept the bribe and were convincing the people not to do so in a respectful manner. I asked myself who is real culprit? who is more corrupt? The policemen or us?
Incident:-2
Two months back in August, I was traveling to Pune from Mumbai with my father. In the middle of the journey we decided to take a break and parked our car in some food mall on the express way. Due to Sunday there was pretty much crowd in the mall, people were returning to their homes after having fun for the weekend. There were variety of vehicles parked inside the premises of mall. From public transport to costly lavish imported cars. Most of the people were eating their snacks, having their drinks and were carelessly throwing the waste in the premises. There was one man who was continuously cleaning the premises, was patient enough to collect all the waste and to dumb it into garbage can. But unfortunately he was alone and the speed of throwing waste was far greater than collection. Finally that poor fellow lost his patience and protested to group of four people sitting in some costly imported car. At first, the group ignored him but when that house keeping guy demanded an apology for their behavior, one of the man from the group opened his wallet and offered him a note of Rs. 50/-. The house keeping guy lost his temper and warned them to behave themselves and rejected the offer. I asked myself, who is well cultured and good citizen? Those so called elite class of educated men or this poor fellow who was just a house keeping guy with small salary, who was performing his duty honestly and was rejecting the bribe to maintain his self respect? Who is more corrupt? Those so called educated elites or this poor fellow who is considered as illiterate by most of us.
Incident:- 3
I was visiting my bank to complete some formalities regarding my bank account. I filled the required form, attached the required documents and submitted those to the Head clerk. He advised me to wait for some time. I sat on the nearby chair and started observing the crowd. It was the first week of the month, people were standing in the queue to get their work done. There was only one counter to deposit and to withdraw the money. It was taking too much time to serve the customers, the queue was getting long and people were loosing patience. There was one old man in the queue, nearly eighty years of age. It looked like he was standing there for long time. He must had been desperate to get his pension hence he was standing in the queue with patience. Slowly the queue was moving and he was slowly coming nearer to his destination. All of sudden the lady at the counter announced that those who want to withdraw the money should go to the next counter ( these kind of things frequently happen in nationalized banks). There was a huge rush to reach the next counter, the old grandfather was unable to move fast due to his age and those who were behind him in the queue ( mostly young men and women) were now ahead of him. The old man was almost in tears but nobody even showed courtesy to let him go ahead in the queue, finally he prepared his mind and stayed in the queue waiting for his turn.
Don't you think we are so self centered that we even refuse to grant other's right in the social life? Do we find any difference in the corrupt politicians and us?
May be the only difference is we do it in small scale and they do it in large scale, but both of us follow corrupt practices. There is famous old Sanskrit proverb "यथा राजा तथा प्रजा" (Yatha Raja Thatha Praja) means, the subjects of the king will be same as him. If the King is good, his subjects will follow him and if the King is corrupt then too they will follow him in the same way. In democracy who is king? We the people. The political leaders pretends that they are our servants and they follow us in exactly the same way. This is just other side of this whole story.......
I was happy to see that somebody is there who is honest and is ready to fight till his last breath against the corrupt politicians and their corrupt system, he received phenomenal impact on the youth, middle class and elite society in our country. But in last few months I got to see and experience numerous things which made me think to myself. Is that true that only politicians, bureaucrats and all types of government employees including police men are corrupt? And what about us? Are we clean? Or we are just the poor chaps who were forced to bribe and follow these corrupt practices by people of above mentioned categories? If our answer is yes, then we are fooling ourselves. After introspecting ourselves we would find that we too follow such practices which are more or less corrupt in nature.
I would like to share following three incidents which I experienced in last few months.
Incident:-1
It was Saturday afternoon, I was waiting for green light on the street. Suddenly I saw small crowd gathered at the corner of the street. The crowd contained some traffic police men surrounded by small number of people. Those people were caught by policemen while breaking the Red light or violating the no parking area or for not possessing the driving license. The surprising thing was people were trying to offer the bribe to policemen to let them go, they were not willing to pay the fine and accept the receipt and the more surprising thing was the police men were refusing to accept the bribe and were convincing the people not to do so in a respectful manner. I asked myself who is real culprit? who is more corrupt? The policemen or us?
Incident:-2
Two months back in August, I was traveling to Pune from Mumbai with my father. In the middle of the journey we decided to take a break and parked our car in some food mall on the express way. Due to Sunday there was pretty much crowd in the mall, people were returning to their homes after having fun for the weekend. There were variety of vehicles parked inside the premises of mall. From public transport to costly lavish imported cars. Most of the people were eating their snacks, having their drinks and were carelessly throwing the waste in the premises. There was one man who was continuously cleaning the premises, was patient enough to collect all the waste and to dumb it into garbage can. But unfortunately he was alone and the speed of throwing waste was far greater than collection. Finally that poor fellow lost his patience and protested to group of four people sitting in some costly imported car. At first, the group ignored him but when that house keeping guy demanded an apology for their behavior, one of the man from the group opened his wallet and offered him a note of Rs. 50/-. The house keeping guy lost his temper and warned them to behave themselves and rejected the offer. I asked myself, who is well cultured and good citizen? Those so called elite class of educated men or this poor fellow who was just a house keeping guy with small salary, who was performing his duty honestly and was rejecting the bribe to maintain his self respect? Who is more corrupt? Those so called educated elites or this poor fellow who is considered as illiterate by most of us.
Incident:- 3
I was visiting my bank to complete some formalities regarding my bank account. I filled the required form, attached the required documents and submitted those to the Head clerk. He advised me to wait for some time. I sat on the nearby chair and started observing the crowd. It was the first week of the month, people were standing in the queue to get their work done. There was only one counter to deposit and to withdraw the money. It was taking too much time to serve the customers, the queue was getting long and people were loosing patience. There was one old man in the queue, nearly eighty years of age. It looked like he was standing there for long time. He must had been desperate to get his pension hence he was standing in the queue with patience. Slowly the queue was moving and he was slowly coming nearer to his destination. All of sudden the lady at the counter announced that those who want to withdraw the money should go to the next counter ( these kind of things frequently happen in nationalized banks). There was a huge rush to reach the next counter, the old grandfather was unable to move fast due to his age and those who were behind him in the queue ( mostly young men and women) were now ahead of him. The old man was almost in tears but nobody even showed courtesy to let him go ahead in the queue, finally he prepared his mind and stayed in the queue waiting for his turn.
Don't you think we are so self centered that we even refuse to grant other's right in the social life? Do we find any difference in the corrupt politicians and us?
May be the only difference is we do it in small scale and they do it in large scale, but both of us follow corrupt practices. There is famous old Sanskrit proverb "यथा राजा तथा प्रजा" (Yatha Raja Thatha Praja) means, the subjects of the king will be same as him. If the King is good, his subjects will follow him and if the King is corrupt then too they will follow him in the same way. In democracy who is king? We the people. The political leaders pretends that they are our servants and they follow us in exactly the same way. This is just other side of this whole story.......
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