Sasietho Felix
Asst. Professor St. Joseph’s College Jakhama
“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's needs, but not every man's greed.”
― Mahatma Gandhi
Greed is the mother of all types of corruption, whether you face it in a government office or private office, while travelling by train, paying your taxes, in a government hospital, on road while driving or read in the papers and on TV channels, as we are doing these days with no end in sight. However, it must be clearly understood, that Greed is an unacceptable human folly, present in most of us to a certain degree. In some cases, it’s just the ordinary natural greed, while in others, it is insatiable.
Greed leads to corruption which is the misuse of public power or entrusted power (by heritage, education, marriage, election, appointment or whatever else) for private gain. This covers not only the politician and the public servant but also the notary public, the team leader at a workplace, the administrator or admissions-officer of a private school or hospital, the coach of a soccer team, etc. The corruption behaviour would include bribery, fraud, stealing the public resources, partiality/favouritism, seizure of public assets for private use, etc.
Corruption has become very common amongst almost every section of the society at every level. It is not only prevalent amongst rich who are greedy in spite of possessing enough but also prevalent amongst poor. The fact is that large numbers of our society are now involved in corrupt practices in one way or the other, either due to greed or due to compulsion.
Corruption arises due to lack of rules, regulations, transparency and accountability in public sectors, control, supervision and auditing, articulated Code of Conduct for public servants and politicians, attitudes or circumstances that make average people disregard the law, the change in the value system and ethical qualities of people, the moral and ethics have declined and most people give more importance to money than excellence, bad incentives, such as any employee not earning enough to live on; so he supplements his income with bribes, tolerance of people towards corruption, absence of strong public forum or civil society to oppose corruption, etc
The most important aspect of corruption, which is the quality of human resource, we are producing. Seed of the corruption lies in the childhood and upbringing of the child, when all his good or bad habits get ingrained. Once again, we reap what we sow. I can say with conviction and full confidence that, if the childhood training at home and in school, is value based, we cannot have so many high flying corrupt in our society.
Corruption diminishes investment and suppresses economic growth and development and also reduces the effectiveness of public administration. It diverts the public resources towards corrupt people and away from the needy and poor people. So, corruption can be considered anti-poor and anti-development.
Corruption is like cancer in human system. Like cancer, corruption eats away the system slowly but surely from inside, initially without knowing it, but by the time, you know of it, it may be too late. Corruption is infectious and corrupt are mostly aggressive. In an office, if fifteen people are working, one or two corrupt may corrupt the whole department, because corrupt will be aggressive, will keep the higher officials happy by sweat talk and illegal money, and will make fun of the honest person and make his/her life hell and survival difficult. Honest person, may ultimately, join the band wagon or leave. Genesis of Corruption and Black money has gone deep inside our society like cancer. And cancer requires long term specialized treatment, which is quite painful and so we have to endure and fight against corruption to do away with it.
The problem in our society is not the lack of knowledge or understanding about corrupt practices but the lack of courage to stand against such practices. It is very easy to target others but what about ourselves? We have to understand that the system is corrupt because we are also corrupt. First, we have to change ourselves then only we can expect change in others. This is a very old method to point the fingers towards the wrongdoing of others. But no one is ready to check their own character. Are we really interested to eradicate corruption from our society? If the answer is yes, then we have to start from ourselves rather than ask others to do. First, we have to change and then only we can expect the change in others. We should prove that we are right then only we can ask others to follow the suit.
Corruption affects everyone, and everyone needs to fight it!
Rukutalu Veswuh Department of Zoology St. Joseph’s college, Jakhama
