Bribery to what extent

Dear Friends,

Just like to know from you with sincerity, have you ever been able to get you jobs done maybe at the Government level or elsewhere without having to pay something or other in kind or cash.  Well! If you have then I must say you are very lucky because I have experienced that no job can be done without it. Yeh, sometimes we call it “Tip” or “Chai pee lena” even to those who do not deserve it, as the job that they are doing, they are being paid for it. But how many of us or them understand. Can we stop this? Well we can always get united and try it out but then to what extent. Wait to see if your job is done in a short while or never at all, then eventually you have to take the wrong way out to speed up matters!

Corruption is the highly contagious social disease which has spread its roots to the mind of the bad people.  In general terms, bribery means exchange of cash, material or goods in return of a favour that is otherwise impossible or hard to attain. However much we say that we are against bribery, against giving or taking any kind of bribe, deep down we all know that we are either accepting or offering bribe in a way or the other.

Now-a-days, lots of benefits are given by the government of India to the poor people on the basis of various rules and regulations to bring social awareness among common people as well as equality in the society. However, poor people are not getting benefited of those advantages given by the government as many officers doing corruption secretly in between the channel before reaching to the poor people. They are doing corruption against law for just fulfilling their own pockets with money.  Low salaries norms of the government employees force them towards channel of corruption. Complex laws and procedures of the government distract common people to get any type of help from government.

It is nearly impossible to find a person who has neither given nor accepted any kind of bribe in his entire lifetime. If you want your kid to get admitted in a better school, you offer bribe, if you want a seat allotted in a train, you offer bribe, if you want to get rid of the crimes you have committed, you offer bribes; as a matter of fact, there is no area in life where you do not offer bribes.

In fact you even bribe your child with a chocolate or two to get the work done. Bribery thus starts from the household itself. When a child will see his or her parents offering bribe, what outcome do you expect. The most important reason for corruption especially in India is the never-ending chain of bribes that are offered and accepted throughout the country.

All we talk about is equality of all the citizens, allowing equal opportunity to one and all in matters of education and employment and the like. But this equality is impossible to achieve especially where an individual takes away the opportunity of another individual just to fulfil his own self- interest. You are obviously taking away the seat of a deserving individual when you offer huge sums of money to get an admission in your favourite Medical College. It is the government of a country which can make or break this bribery system.

But in a country like India where bribery is the major source of income of most of the government officials and public servants, we cannot expect the government itself to do away with this corrupt practice. But the citizens cannot complain that the government and government officials are involved in the corrupt practice of bribery because it is the citizens who offer bribe to these public servants. If the citizens themselves stop offering bribes, the roots of bribery will diminish in no time.

It is essential for parents at home and teachers in school to teach the children the importance of honesty so that they do not offer or accept bribes in their lifetime. Slowly but steadily, the practice of offering and giving bribes can be eliminated from its very roots if people join hands and take an oath to eliminate this practice by hook or by crook. But the bitter truth remains; we ourselves cannot imagine our life free from this practice so how do we expect to abolish it completely.

Parsan Narang

26th September 2016