Our country is at serial 76 in the list of corrupt countries in the world according to a survey made in Germany. Let us hang our heads in shame instead of taking pride that we have come down seven points viz. 83 from our past record. It is more than shame that the world’s largest democracy is beset with such a high level of corruption. The blame comes to the people who tolerate corruption silently instead of throwing the corrupt out of power and out of social recognition. The world no more thinks us to be the true followers of Gandhiji who attached highest importance to values of honesty in all affairs of life. But what has befallen his country and his people that they have forgotten, nay thrown to winds, his teachings and his personal example.
If Gandhi is the founder of free India, the politicians whom free India produced are the founding fathers of the religion of corruption in this country. Power corrupts absolutely and absolute power corrupts absolutely. This axiom is nowhere as true as in our country. Anna Hazare led a movement against corruption two years ago. Millions joined him because they had become the victims of corruption. They wanted India minus corruption. But imagine how the politicians made him eat the humble pie. Imagine how tooth and nail sections of our political class are fighting those who are fighting against corruption. When a high up is charged with corruption, he uses all possible means to threaten the very existence of the accuser. He raises an array of cronies, legal experts, selected officials, sympathizing politicos and above all vulnerable sections of media who can be easily bought for peanuts to project him as the benefactor of this beleaguered society.
We have become prisoners of personality cult; we have bargained moral values for falsehood and vice; we have willfully struck down the values of our great civilization and we have become prisoners of lust for materialism. Leaders have become corrupt and shameless not because they are over smart to be so. No, it is because the people, whom they claim to be representing, are utterly docile struck by inertia and despondence. They do not know that power ultimately rests with the people. People that cannot make the wise and sensible use of power it has, is imbecile and impotent. The destiny of a nation cannot be changed but by its own people. The blight comes to the nation and not to the corrupt person in name. Therefore the nation must stand to wash off this blight from its name. The people of India fought a foreign country that looted us of our wealth. As free people, now we loot the country to our heat’s content.
We have laws and laws; plethora of laws, laws that can take into their fold even the slightest irregularity in public affairs. Strangely, each time somebody is accused and charged with corruption, civil society is told that laws are inadequate to deal with the charges of corruption. Then new laws are made and then the story is repeated. It is not that there is discrepancy in the legal system and structure, no, it is the fiendish effort of saving the skin of the culprit and helping him to go scot free. A case is brought in the court of law against a terrorist who has perpetrated heinous crime against humanity, and a Quixotic defendant comes forward to wash all his sins and resurrect him as angel. How can we explain this rank aberration in human nature? Corruption is eating into our vitals. If the Indian nation does not rise in unison to bury the demon of corruption deep, it will be playing with its future. The world will hurl on us the most dreadful predictions ever made viz. by and large the people get the Government they deserve. We have now a Government in place that Indians deserve. Let us launch a pincer attack on corruption and relieve the nation of this scourge.
Follow our WhatsApp channel