ROOTS OF CORRUPTION – INDIANS GENERALLY CARE LESS FOR LAW
Is it really justified to brand the politicians and public servants alone as Corrupt? Does corruption begin and end there?
These questions have been pondering in my mind for quite sometime and after a lot of introspection I feel though we can argue that the chain of corruption end with Politicians and public servants, it surely does not begin with them.
The roots of corruption begins somewhere in our minds. So I wanted to put up a series of posts on the root causes of corruption and in the process also analyse whether corruption, if not possible to be removed completely, can atleast be given a legal face, which would do more good to the society. Sometime total eradication of corruption may result in a break-down of a certain branch of the administrative machinery especially in a scenario when there is no accountability among the Government machinery to perform and give results beneficial to the national interest. I will be picking up aspects which I feel form part of the roots of corruption and I will be too glad if I can get more inputs from readers whereby together we can disintegrate this seemingly impregnable web of corruption pervading all sections of our society.
One such root of corruption I feel is the lack of respect for law that is generally prevalent in our society right from the lowest strata of the society to the highest levels of the society and the Government. It is this lack of respect of law that is also impeding in the proper enforcement of law. If one happens to peruse the wide range of statutes that has been promulgated by our Governments, we would find that we are adequately endowed with rules and regulations for excellent administration of our Democracy. But unfortunately there is widespread ignorance of law which is helping in prevention of its enforceability by vested interests and lack of respect for law.
Take the simple example of the traffic signal. I am sure nine out of ten people among us would not mind jumping the signal if given a chance. And I have seen educated well-placed people justifying the reasons for the traffic violation with the police and trying to get away without paying any fine. Today I found in the papers that nearly all the commercial buildings in Chennai have not fitted the filter or Diaphragm in their sewage outlets which prevents solid waste from flowing into the main sewage, the main cause of clogging of sewages. The Madras High Court has passed orders seeking to restrict manual cleaning of underground sewages, declaring the same as injurious to human and they are very much justified in doing so. There is a strict rule and instruction for the commercial establishments and buildings to put up the filter, but almost none have complied. The cost of putting up that structure would be negligible when compared to the cost of the whole building and also the bribe they are ready to pay for not complying. Notices have been given by the Government to all the building owners but to no avail. How do we define this attitude of the people in question. They are ready to pay a few thousands of rupees in bribe to abstain from constructing the filter every now and then, rather than construct it and do a whole lot of good to themselves as well as to a lot of other people, mainly the hapless Corporation worker who has to clean the sewage manually.
So corruption definitely stems from this root of “Lack of Respect to the Law”.
These questions have been pondering in my mind for quite sometime and after a lot of introspection I feel though we can argue that the chain of corruption end with Politicians and public servants, it surely does not begin with them.
The roots of corruption begins somewhere in our minds. So I wanted to put up a series of posts on the root causes of corruption and in the process also analyse whether corruption, if not possible to be removed completely, can atleast be given a legal face, which would do more good to the society. Sometime total eradication of corruption may result in a break-down of a certain branch of the administrative machinery especially in a scenario when there is no accountability among the Government machinery to perform and give results beneficial to the national interest. I will be picking up aspects which I feel form part of the roots of corruption and I will be too glad if I can get more inputs from readers whereby together we can disintegrate this seemingly impregnable web of corruption pervading all sections of our society.
One such root of corruption I feel is the lack of respect for law that is generally prevalent in our society right from the lowest strata of the society to the highest levels of the society and the Government. It is this lack of respect of law that is also impeding in the proper enforcement of law. If one happens to peruse the wide range of statutes that has been promulgated by our Governments, we would find that we are adequately endowed with rules and regulations for excellent administration of our Democracy. But unfortunately there is widespread ignorance of law which is helping in prevention of its enforceability by vested interests and lack of respect for law.
Take the simple example of the traffic signal. I am sure nine out of ten people among us would not mind jumping the signal if given a chance. And I have seen educated well-placed people justifying the reasons for the traffic violation with the police and trying to get away without paying any fine. Today I found in the papers that nearly all the commercial buildings in Chennai have not fitted the filter or Diaphragm in their sewage outlets which prevents solid waste from flowing into the main sewage, the main cause of clogging of sewages. The Madras High Court has passed orders seeking to restrict manual cleaning of underground sewages, declaring the same as injurious to human and they are very much justified in doing so. There is a strict rule and instruction for the commercial establishments and buildings to put up the filter, but almost none have complied. The cost of putting up that structure would be negligible when compared to the cost of the whole building and also the bribe they are ready to pay for not complying. Notices have been given by the Government to all the building owners but to no avail. How do we define this attitude of the people in question. They are ready to pay a few thousands of rupees in bribe to abstain from constructing the filter every now and then, rather than construct it and do a whole lot of good to themselves as well as to a lot of other people, mainly the hapless Corporation worker who has to clean the sewage manually.
So corruption definitely stems from this root of “Lack of Respect to the Law”.
posted by hari at
10:41 PM
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