Monday, January 30, 2012

Does the root cause of corruption lie with the society or with the Government? How and why? What would make society not to acquiesce corruption?



All luxury corrupts either the morals or the state.             :Joubert
Corruption in human society has prevailed from time immemorial in one form or the other. In its simplest form, corruption can be defined as misuse of public position or power for the fulfilment of selfish motives to gain personal gratification. As long as India is concerned it is the third most corrupt nation in Asia. Everyone is affected by it in one form or the other. It is limiting our development. Billions of black money is stashed abroad. These are the money which should have used to reduce hunger and poverty in India. Layman no more believes in the system. Worst of all there are voices about considering other form of governance and democracy.
           Amidst all pervasive cynicism let’s try to focus on some of the root cause of corruption which in my view not only lie with society but also with the government has contributed immensely to it. Greed, luxury, reluctant to go in the process and above all illiteracy and unemployment are some reasons entrenched in society which helps corruption to spread. People have a great thrust for luxury. Anything we do, we do it to make our lives comfortable. That is what we want when we go in the system. We expect our work to be done without delay. If a officer says a man to come next day he tries to make his work done by unscrupulous means to avoid coming next day. Of course, the non availability of time to has worsened the matter. Illiteracy and unawareness are the major problem and origin of most of the problems of our democratic society. A democracy can successfully run only on the participation of its citizens. An illiterate person fails to exercise his franchise. His vote is very easy to buy. And this leads to the entry of criminals and use of black money in the society. Once these criminals and unethically rich people enter into the system, the problems of a democracy, especially corruption, gets aggravated. Needless to say those who win an election on money power, also try to recover at least double of their money after gaining power. And this is the root cause why a layman only gets 5 paisa out of 100 paisa spent to reach him. Also, an illiterate person can easily lose his/her entitlements. For example, it was easy to pay a MNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Guarantee Act) worker less than his daily remuneration because of his unawareness (however, this has been sorted out by direct payment to their bank account ).
       Besides above societal deficiency, problems like little payment of salary to govt. employee than private employee and no fear of losing job of public servant gives a lot of push to corruption.
        Inaction, inadequate action and failure of government’s action is the major reason why societal problems still exist. Even after 63 year after being republic we failed to spread education to the extent it was needed. In order to make society not to acquiesce corruption first and foremost thing we can do is to educate them and make them aware of central and state’s schemes made for their development and make govt. functioning more transparent. RTI is an extraordinary tool which people should be encouraged to use. And finally an effective law to punish corrupt will make a big difference.

1 comment:

  1. You know if we seriously desire for a corruption-free society, decent political atmosphere, has to put genuine commitment in our own mindset, most of the communities (such as Bengali or Gujarati) in this sub-continent are covered by ‘Culture of Poverty' (hopelessness), irrespective of class or economic strata, lives in pavement or apartment. We are not ashamed of the deep-rooted corruption in this society at heart, decaying general quality of life, bad Politico-Governance, poor work place, weak mother language, continuous consumption of common Social Space. We love to become parents only by self-procreation (blindfold support by lame excuses, followed by the very animal instinct) depriving their(the children) fundamental rights of a caring society, fearless & dignified living. Never search for other positive alternative gesture, a passionate way of parenthood, stop giving birth to any child him/herself till it improves up to the mark, co-parenting children those are born out of extreme poverty, instead. A deliberate attempt to touch the core of the society. Induce reasonableness in our (pool of insensitive persons) way of life. If a pure freedom is desired from vicious cycle of poverty, rotten capitalism need to involve ourselves in 'Production of space'(Henri Lefebvre) movement, clean & quality Politics would certainly come up. Howrah, India. Mob: +91 9051147375.

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