ARE WE CORRUPT????

Corruption is a plague which has affected our country in a very severe manner. It has clenched its jaws on almost the entire bureaucracy along with all the politicians. In these ranks there are hardly a handful of people who have moral integrity and honesty left in their hearts. But is corruption only limited to these few people who “govern” our country? It has slowly but surely descended into lower ranks as well. I feel that corruption is type of cancer which starts at the top and multiplies infinitely while moving towards the bottom.

We generally are made to believe that the easiest and the guaranteed way of getting things done is to pass the bucks under the table (for the naive reader it means to bribe somebody). This may happen either as a live demonstration from our own family members or friends, or else it maybe viewed regularly in the movies and the TV serials. With the abundance of news channels nowadays, we regularly get to see through their “sting operations “ that even the biggest of ministers or officials can be bribed into making deals through which they sell their own country along with each and every citizen of it.

Whether it is the media, or any Tom, Dick and Harry on the streets, everyone has two common complaints that the government is corrupt and the system is flawed. Our parents and their forefather’s favourite pastime had been blaming the corrupt government for its flaws. Their forefathers blamed the British rule for messing up the whole system. Maybe in this blame game we have lost the essence of the problem. These complaints might be true and maybe it has been so for the last few decades. But what do we do about it? This is the question that each and every INDIAN should ask himself/herself.

The past is beyond us and we can do nothing about it (until I start work on my time travelling donkey. I am thinking of mutating his genes by mating him with this Martian I found on my way home. But I think that would be part of another blog…). The future is upon us and the present is where the work needs to be done for improving our future. This is not the time to crib over our past and blame others for their mistakes. It is time for action. RIGHT HERE RIGHT NOW!!!!

What we need to realise is that corruption has been embedded deep into each strata of our society and to completely eliminate it we have only one way. The way of truth, the way of purity. We have to first of all weed it out of ourselves, then our family, then our relatives and then our neighbours, friends and so on. This is not the time to question: What can I alone as an individual do? How can a single entity change the whole corrupt system? It is the time to believe that: I CAN change myself and my country with my actions. Understanding that change is not a ‘2 minute noodles’ but rather it is the ‘wine’ which gets its taste only after years of patience, is the first step to improving the system.
We have to be ready to do things the hard way and not look for the easy way out. We have to follow the law and believe in our judicial system (which off late has become really proactive). We can only expect the system to be fair if we first of all change ourselves.


This reminds me of the dialogue of Aamir Khan (DJ) in Rang De Basanti : “zindagi jeene ke do hi tarike hote hain. Ek, jo ho raha hai hone do, bardasht karte jao. Ya fir, zimmedari uthao usko badalne ki”(There are only two ways of living life. One, let whatever’s happening go on and keep tolerating and enduring it. Or else , take up the responsibility of changing it).


Kind of sums it up doesn’t it…………….