The Culprit

There is one thing that everybody seems to be very sure of, from rickshaw wala to rocket scientist and that is to – hang people like Kalmadis, Rajas and likes because of their presumed involvement in corruption of epic proportions. People find these occasions as an opportunity to vent out their anger and frustrations in a collective manner. Some groups conduct road rallies, some file Public Interest Litigations in courts, some groups take more eye soothing method of burning effigies and beating the offender’s pictures with slippers, shoes and sandals. In the other dimension of space-time continuum the TV networks host rounds of open debates/discussions where prominent mind mulls over the curse of corruptions and its implications in a never-seen-before melodramatic manner, the GEN X,Y,Z etc. share FB status and soul wrenching SMSes that go viral in few minutes. And last but not the least the News channels dissect the incidents to such nano levels that the audience braving all this is compelled to question their own existence. Yes, an unsuspecting viewer can go ballistic and jump off the window to save himself from the never-ending, self-repeating jamboori of circus-of-corruption in the great democracy of India (read free-for-all to loot).

But wait, hold on, pause…

Who are these culprits? Where have they come from? How could they do such scams?

After some rational thinking and applying the law of common sense it seems that - Kalmadis, Rajas and likes are nothing but “extremely magnified, projections of our own corrupt little selves”.

Yes, no matter how un-parliamentary and absurd it sounds but the fact is that these culprits are actually reflection of our daily habits. Given a chance we all would have done the same thing. Believe me we all would have because we always do. May be our actions are not caught on the radar or are not the news headlines but we all do our share of corruptions willingly or unwillingly.

I believe that the common man (people like you and me) are the biggest culprits, our collective corruption could put to shame even the shrewdest of Kalmadis and Rajas.

If you me ask how? Well then, find it out yourself.

The auto-rickshaw driver over charges , the taxi driver over charges, the government official asks for nazrana (presents), we pay bribe to get our work done earlier ( electric meter, water , gas), we pay bribe to jump lines, we use references to get our work done quickly, we use connections to get privileged information, we take money to sell our votes, we overlook atrocities for presumed political gains, we feel jealous of others growth, we encourage our kids to do all sorts of things to win the rat-race, we choose our friends who can further our career, we mingle with the right people to go to the top, we don’t pray but we bribe even gods to get their blessings, we don’t pay taxes, shopkeepers don’t give bills, we purchase tickets in black-market, the doctors prescribe costly medicines, surgeons are doing operations that need not be done, the medical representative is just bothered about finish his quote of sales, the teacher is least bothered about his students, he is more concerned about tuition incomes, the lawyer is working overtime to prolong the case to ensure his earning. The list can go on and on. We all get the drift.

Everybody talks about the corruption at the ‘top’ and many propose elaborate checks and balances to overcome it. I would suggest instead, let’s talk about the corruption at the bottom, the corruption that is done every day, every hour, every minute and every second by all of us in one form or another.

We all unanimously support punishing the bigger culprits but what about us? Can we, with the same ferocity and conviction punish ourselves? And if we cannot than we don’t have any right to point fingers at others. We do corruptions of “our level” and they do the corruption of “their level”, in the eye of law each one is culprit.

And if, we really want to eradicate corruption forever than we already know the answer as to where to begin.

Don’t we?

So who is the real culprit?