Prof Javed Mughal
I don’t hold any specific segment of human society, any Government or anyone else responsible for the cultivation of corruption-cult in the system. Ours is not the only country which happens to be drenched in the mud of this malaise but the entire world stands plagued and paralysed with this curse. How can I exempt the so-called rishis, munies or prophets and countless other saints and spiritual faces who have first of all sown the seeds of corruption initially in the shape of tohfas and uphaars? The same tohfaas and Uphaars became the weakness of the human beings with the passage of time and raised the level of expectations and activated the bug of greed and avarice for gifts and presents, deep down in the minds of the human society. These so-called spiritual souls actually encouraged the octopus of corruption… I mean monetary corruption…. to stretch out its tentacles to all nooks and corners of this world. Those who put forward the concept of donations to God, to the prophets or on the shrines are in fact responsible for this obnoxious cult of corruption. Doing so, the intellectually not-so-advanced humanity developed a faith that nothing can be achieved without donating something and same donations, or the tokens of gratitude by and by culminated into the emergence of modern corruption. Here lies the genesis of all this nonsense looming large like a sword of Damocles on the head of the modern world. The corruption of all kinds is actually born out of the womb of seduction for attaining something out of the way and hence is not something extraneous to us. It is something which is already there in our being and is the inextricable part of the human nature. It is in our blood and has simply been raised to surface with certain social but objectionable gestures. What we have down the centuries been taught by our ancestors is that ‘even God and prophets do not fulfill our wishes without getting their shares’. If you don’t pray, your God will not let you go unpunished; if you don’t disgorge your cash and coins on the shrines, yours desires can not be fulfilled; and at the end of the day we naturally developed a conviction that if we don’t grease the palms of our officers, they will be kind to us no more. This way the monetary corruption has evolved by shaping and reshaping itself down the ages. Such orientation of the human mind-set by the ancestors has actually paved a smooth way for presently prevailing corruption culture being faced by all Tom Dick and Harry. Our systems have always tried to check this pestilence, the laws have been enacted to discourage it but unfortunately all efforts have ended in a smoke. Our governments, from time to time, have attempted but utterly failed to behead the demon of corruption. It is because the corruption, as a matter of fact, is not always imposed on us from outside; it is rather seeped into the very blood of the mankind. This virus is already there in the blood which, instead of being suppressed or removed with the vaccinations of intellectual sublimity, gets activated with dominance of ulterior motives and selfish ends by the external agencies. A gradual motivation and conditioning of character is needed to weed out this pernicious plant. You go the secretariat or any other office of the state, you will be surprised to see that the officials demand and expect money from the stakeholders as matter of right. A specific corruption-culture-encouraging environment is prevailing in the administrative corridors and you are left almost with no other option than to offer money to the concerned officials for the disposal of your files.
We enacted anti-corruption laws to curb this fast growing menace but we failed because the laws enacted for the purpose were never allowed to jump out of the hard-bound files or were simply hijacked by the corruption-dons leaving the state and country in a sorry state of affairs. Now India, in respect to corruption and bribery, has almost come to the point of no return. Even if thousands of Modis are installed as Prime Ministers, hundreds of Lok Pal Bills are passed and dozens of Annas stage protests and countless camera are fixed in and out of the offices, the corruption can’t be checked. This is my firm conviction. Need of the hour is to change the agencies not the modus operandi to bell this ferocious cat of corruption. The fact remains that money is the weakness of character which can be moved only by the life-long orientation and motivation, not by the customary laws and legalities. The laws can change your outer shell of the body only. It fails when applied to your inner self. The complete blood needs to be removed or transfused from the veins of this country to make it neat and clean or free of bribery and corruption and we know it is impossible. I think India occupies a very disgusting status in the world list of corrupt nations with J&K State being on the top. The growing spate in the spurt of corruption-monetary, moral and ethical has bitten into very infrastructure of this state. Where a file needs money-tyres to move from one table to another; where an employee gets rusted like a mechanical part of some steel machinery and is required to be greased with money-lubricants and where most of our custodians, in the capacity of ministers and bureaucrates, need to be stuffed with bouquets decorated with money-flowers perfumed with sycophancy and adulation and where the third law of motion, “To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction” is implemented in letter and spirit very carefully and tactfully, you are helpless and has no other choice than to compromise. This fact is fully realized by our subsequent governments too but I fail to understand as to why they don’t admit it openly. One is likely to get as much as one invests in the Govt. offices particularly in our Civil Secretariat. Only one formula is operable in our state administration especially in Secretariat and i.e. ‘Give money and get the work done.’ If you are honest or not in favour of disgorging money, if some check is imposed on the administrative vultures or in case some so-called honest employee has happened to come across you, you are compelled to drop all hopes for the timely disposal of your file or any pendency. If a detailed survey of the secretariat functioning in particular and other offices across the state in general is conducted, the pendency is fifty times more than the outcome. Work-culture, transparency and adherence to the principles is no more than the Platonic Utopia which was never practicable. The file which can be disposed of in an hour lingers on for months together until the stake-holder suffers the most and greases the palms of the concerned. There are two categories of the monetarily corrupt people-one that straightway demands money from the stakeholders and the second that doesn’t demand and maintains its tenor but creates such compelling circumstances that the stake-holders ultimately takes a lying down fully exhausted and gives money with the folded hands. When the situation is invincible, I prefer the first category to the second one simply because the first category is honestly a dishonest one and does what it says and says what it feels. It dabbles into face to face bargaining letting the stakeholder suffer no more and making the disposal of the pendency possible well in time. Now it is absolutely impossible to stem the tide of over-burgeoning cult of corruption, I know and our so-called ministers and chief ministers and many other lords of the system, when failed to curb this threat, have also become the part of the system making hay while the sun shines. Under such circumstances, my free and fair suggestion to the government is that this bribery must be legalized and there should be an open system to receive money against proper receipts etc for the timely disposal of the pendency. Some portion of this fee or legalized bribery can be extended to the concerned officers for timely settlement of the case in the shape of commission which now-a-days is very much in vogue among the traffickers of this stuff and non-sense. An open Charges-Calendar or ready-reckoner for the disposal of the files should be issued and time-frame for the pendency-clearance should be notified publicly so that the stakeholder doesn’t waste his time and energy while running amuck in the offices or the corridors of the secretariat. Instead, they should go to the treasury deposit the disposal-charges for their respective files and submit the receipt to the concerned department. On the prow of the Secretariat, there must be a digital glow board where the details of every file with disposal-dead-lines, must properly be displayed for the facilitation and information of the public. The Govt. shall, off-course, benefit in two ways from my suggestion-first the implementation of my valuable suggestion will add considerably to the revenue of the state already belched out by our political and administrative gluttons and second it will save the time and energy of the public too. With establishment of this system, the corruption-money will go to the state or national exchequer instead of slipping into the personal under-pockets of the official black-sheep.
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