Corruption affects layman directly

It’s great that everyone appears to be concerned and eager to support any kind of anti-corruption movement irrespective of who is leading and who all are associated with it. After Anna, it’s now Baba’s turn. The government is enjoying the present situation and making every effort to make Baba’s movement a huge success so that it can play musical chair with the two. Some, highly optimistic, claim that the present anti-corruption movement will be second JP movement and country will witness a great change. If, at all, any such change takes place then, obviously, it would be a great victory of the people but will this country or rather any country of the world could ever be a corruption-free country. I doubt!

Basically what is corruption? If a child, of any person, fails to get admission in a particular school but the parents succeed in getting their child admitted to that particular school by using their contacts then should it be called corruption? Obviously, the person will not call it corruption and would rather boast about his contacts whereas the others will call it corruption. Similarly, if a particular person uses his contacts to get a license or a contract on rates cheaper than market price then all the others will cry corruption, corruption, corruption. Any sane person would say both falls in the category of corrupt practice. If one is caught while jumping the red light and bribes the traffic personnel and do not pay the actual penalty then the person giving the bribe will loudly call the traffic personnel highly corrupt. If one gets an opportunity to get some out of turn benefit then he would not call himself corrupt but if, instead of him, someone else gets the benefit then it is his birth right to shout that it is sheer corruption and with such rampant corruption the country will not progress. The word 'corruption' is for those who does not get an opportunity to bend the system to his advantage. To me, this is corruption!

It is almost impossible to locate a person who never get involved in any corrupt practice. Of course, this does not give right to justify corruption and allows the things to continue as they are going on. There is a need to check and in my view that check is necessary but never ever dream of having a corrupt-free society. Surely, no developed or developing nation can think of such society and this is reality. Corruption is also an indicator of country's prosperity because if there is a contract to be given and there is only one party who has resources to fulfill the basic criteria for that contract then the party who is to award will not have any choice to get anything in return for awarding the contract neither the party need to give anything extra to get that contract but if the situation changes and there are four or eight eligible parties then there is no doubt that these eight parties will try every mean of influence to get the contract and that would lead to corruption. So if you have more people with more money in other words if there is prosperity in the country then there are more chances that the graph of the corruption would go up. No doubt, there will be more anti-corruption stories and movements because, in any case, losers will go all out against the winner and obviously the number of losers will be more in any prosperous society.

The problem in our country is that common man is directly affected by the corrupt practices because he faces corruption at every step whereas the corruption is no less in developed nations but the common man is not directly affected by it and gets the basic amenities without any hindrance. Anyway, in present scenario where swords are out against corruption and all such things may sound absurd but I do not want to live in fool's paradise!

(Disclaimer: The views expressed in the blog are that of the author and does not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of The Sunday Indian)

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