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.
