Corruption is prevalent in the society since ancient times. History reveals that it was present even in the Mauryan period of our Indian history.

 

Great scholar Kautilya mentioned the presence of forty types of corruption in his contemporary society. It was practised even in Mughal and Sultanate period. When the East India Company took control of the country, corruption reached new heights. Now Corruption in India becomes so common that people now are averse to thinking of public life with it. The simple meaning of corruption is paying more than what it takes for a work done, in terms of monetary or other means.

 

Corruption now a day has become an incorrigible part of our daily lives that a common citizen cannot think his routine works done without it and due to its occurrence in every walk of life in our system; it has made development and progress impossible. There are some problems where we need immediate actions and cooperate, but in order to curb this big problem we need to understand it.

Generally when we think about corruption we think about the 2g scam, Adarsh scam or any other big scam comes in our mind and we forget about our small corrupt activity which paralyzes our system. In fact most of the people in our society directly or indirectly involved in some kind of corruption about which they are either unaware or ignore it. Today, corruption became so common in our society that most of the people have made it legalized by using different phrases like Jugaad, Zukzak, percentage and Sufarish etc. People even do not hesitate to take such phrases as it seems very much legal in the society.

 

Moreover, looking deep into our society or family level even our parents do all kind of short cuts in every field even in children’s admissions, educations and examination thus making strong foundation of corrupt society. At school level teachers earns money without performing his or her duty well. The teacher favours some students to pass the exams, parents helps his child in cheating in exams or giving bribe, the clerks are very famous in taking bribe even they did not do concern work without taking any gift or money. If in any institute when the same mentality of the HOD’s and clerks meet then they left no stone unturned to grab illegal money, in fact, the institute became a plundered home. In some departments bribe is common with the so called legal name as the percentage, they did not even talk to the common people until they get some bucks. In some other departments officers and officials have created gangs of corrupt officials and they legalised their unauthorised share in such a way that the common people consider it as legal fee for his work done, they pay such so-called fee happily without any question.

At political level the political leaders before election distribute money to gain vote and after coming into power, they release funds to the same contractors who sponsored them to win election, for construction. 

 

Even our religious leaders are not free from corruption as they collect wealth in the name of religion and perform religious activity and did not distribute it to the needy and used it for their own selfish purpose or some other illegal purposes.

 

To root out the evil of corruption from society, we need to make a comprehensive code of conduct for politicians, legislatures, bureaucrats, and such code should be strictly enforced. Judiciary should be given more independence and initiatives on issues related to corruption.

Special courts should be set-up to take up such issues and speedy trial to take place. Law and order machinery should be allowed to work without political interference. Public awareness should be made through public meetings and religious gatherings. Moral education should be taught compulsorily since basic school level.

 NGO’s and media should come forward to create awareness against corruption in society and educate people to combat this evil. A special task force should be made against this. The root remedial to eliminate corruption is with every individual as nature has created human being to help others, not for himself that’s why almighty bestowed him with good mind and kind heart that is why we should always care for other while taking every step in life. We must ready to sacrifice at least something for the betterment of others. In fact switching our activities to self-centred to community-centred will definitely lead to corrupt free society.

The writer is a Lecturer in history at DIET Kargil.

You can write your views and comments at sumsdoor@gmail.com