Who will Bell The Cat?

In this age, when globalisation has narrowed distances and hastened information flow, and has spread a sort of equality worldwide; If someone asks us Indians, “What have you got, that we haven’t?”, We can proudly proclaim that we Indians have two additional substances in our blood- ‘Cricket’ and ‘Corruption’. The first one is by choice and passion; the second one is imposed upon us and has now become a part of our blood stream.

The essence and spread of corruption has so deeply invaded in our system that even a few lakh crores worth scam doesn’t even make us raise our hair or thought, forget the finger!  It is this attitude of Indians that is making the probably wealthiest and self-sufficient nation to bow down before foreign powers and systems.

Corruption is something that prevails in our society, spreading its tentacles far and wide to hollow our society and morale. When I moved in from Bangalore after a stint of MNC life to Trivandrum, someone told me that anyone could get a job in certain Technopark companies if they could work out a recommendation. I laughed hi m off, I told him those things happen in government sector, not in big time MNC and private sector companies, but he stood his ground. It took me a little less than a year as an entrepreneur in God’s own country to realise that corruption has eaten deep and well into every single area of our society. You could get recommended for a job even if you are under-qualified in major IT & ITES companies. Vendors like printers, travel agents and others readily provide a ‘second’ inflated bill to be claimed from the companies. Recruitment teams make pots of money from several leading placement agencies and online job portals for recruiting often ‘sub-standard’ manpower from them. The story goes on. I don’t want to waste time, both yours and mine, over the census of corrupt sections in our society, but I’d rather point out to the root of this evil called ‘corruption’.

Over the past few days, I have been trying to think over the reason as to why we Indians became like this. It all seems to boil down to two words – MONEY and LEADER.

Money, the root of all evil! How wonderful if it will be that our country men lived like a family. Under one roof, sharing the resources, working for the advent of a brighter future. There would be no rich, no poor.  All our resources spilt and divided equally. Everyone does their share of work, everyone get’s equal benefits. There would be no need for any competition anymore, no competition over whose kids tops the entrance exams, who gets a bigger paying job, who gets to live a luxurious life and who gets thrown into the rat-race. The children get to pursue their dreams and do what they like; all get paid equally and get to use the same infrastructure. I know, I am talking about a fantasy land. Probably this concept is not possible even in the wildest of dreams. But then, money the instrument which replaced the barter system to help people earn it through hard work and exchange it for their daily necessities has become a two edged sword now. People who want to earn it quick and easy have found means to cheat, steal and amass wealth. As someone said, “All I need is six feet of land, money is something that was not God made, and I cannot take it back, so why amass it, especially through wrong ways?” Money is now an instrument to loot more money, shut up mouths and hide ill doings. It has become the ultimate weapon of ‘mass’ destruction, the mass I refer here is the common man.

The second word that has had my grey cells working overtime is LEADER- India has severe deficiency of true leaders in our new age politicians. A leader is someone who stands for his/her followers, someone who stands amidst the followers and leads them ahead. What we see now is, as soon as a politician becomes elected as a leader he immediately stands apart, he enjoys privileges that his followers are deprived. He/She moves ahead rather than leads ahead the followers. They conveniently follow money and leave his/her followers behind. The irony is that today’s politicians make a mockery of the people and money makes a mockery of the politicians. India lacks a good leader, a leader who at the least tries to save the nation from sinking into the stinky gutters of corruption and poverty. Rather than succumbing down to foreign power, tries to save our nation from the clutches of foreign power and makes us self-sufficient as far as possible.

Now, there are two things we as an Indian citizen could do – sit, stare and sob in silence and try and lead a happy life without considering the future of our next generations. Or take one simple step, yes; one simple step that could probably make a huge difference – START QUESTIONING! We claim that our politicians and bureaucrats are irresponsible, but then as mute citizens aren’t we irresponsible too? If we have elected the leaders, they need to be answerable to the public, and they will do so, only if we start questioning. The government is conveniently sitting over crores and crores of scam and will keep doing so unless we start demanding our rights, that money which you paid as taxes were meant to be spent for you and your society’s development and not to fill the coffers of CWG contractors and officials or telecom giants and ministers.

A single 72 year old voice has sparked a movement now, Anna Hazare has done what I thought was the solution to this evil. The spark is now fast becoming a raging wildfire. People from all walks of life have joined in the demand for the Anti-corruption Lokpak bill to be passed.

A few salient features of the bill are:

1.       An institution called LOKPAL at the centre and LOKAYUKTA in each state will be set up

2.      Like Supreme Court and Election Commission, they will be completely independent of the governments. No minister or bureaucrat will be able to influence their investigations.

3.       Cases against corrupt people will not linger on for years anymore: Investigations in any case will have to be completed in one year. Trial should be completed in next one year so that the corrupt politician, officer or judge is sent to jail within two years.

4.       The loss that a corrupt person caused to the government will be recovered at the time of conviction.

5.       Its members will be selected by judges, citizens and constitutional authorities and not by politicians, through a completely transparent and participatory process.
Just those five points is good enough for us to know why the political parties and governments have been sitting over the bill for the past 42 years. It has been brought up 8 times yet, never got mandated! Whereas the cabinet ministers salaries were hiked from Rs 40000 to Rs 85000 per month in just one sitting and a record time. For details of the Lokpal bill click here

Let us show our support, I am not asking you to wield guns and get into a war mode. Raise your voice, if you dare not, then at least show solidarity with the people who have dared to raise their voice and challenge the system. Remember, the story that your grandma told you with the moral: “A single stick is easy to break, but a bunch of stick can break the nerves”. Demand justice for the accountability of the tax you pay, the money that rightly belongs to you and your children. Let’s demand justice and kill the evil side of money!

– Arun B.Nair, CEO & Chief Mentor of Parivartan Corporate Training Academy
www.parivartancta.com

Disclaimer: The views and ideas expressed in this article is purely by the author. Any facts, data or statistics mentioned are sourced from the internet and reference to real life incidents are from the author’s personal and professional life.