Here's an article which i wrote for the Viewspaper,an online youth magazine.
The dictionary meaning of corruption is lack of integrity or honesty, but for a layman it simply means bribing the government officers to get their work done. It is a rampant issue in India and it is not only confined to politicians and bureaucrats alone but it is very much prevalent in all the levels of the society.
There is massive amount of corruption in India. According to Comptroller and Auditor Generals report, an official government agency, For the year 2007-08 , the Union Government made a provision for transfer of central plan assistance of Rs 51259.85 crore directly to state/district level autonomous bodies, authorities societies etc for implementation of centrally sponsored schemes. These have not been spent fully by the implementing agencies and lie unspent in their accounts. Since India is one the most corrupt countries of the world (It was ranked 74th on the corruption index) it goes on to say that the Indians are dishonest, the degree of which varies from individual to individual. Most of them are involved in corrupt practices in one way or the other, either due to greed or so-called compulsion.
I have no guilt in admitting the fact that once I had to bribe the public officer. I had no choice but to bribe him, in order to get my work done. But later I realized that I always blame the government machinery for the ever-growing corruption in our country, but have never even bothered to ponder upon the fact that it is I who is encouraging corruption in our country. Because people like me easily give in to the demands of the public officers, to get the work done that our country is still one of the most corrupt countries. Agreed that corruption exists because of lack of accountability, transparency and also because of several loopholes in our judicial system but the role of a common citizen can’t be neglected in order to tackle this menace. The Government of our country should take a cue from China, where a Government servant was given a death sentence because he was found to indulge in corruption. Also the role of The Right to Information Act is very much essential in making the Government officers more accountable.
We have a long way to go to make our nation a corruption free country! :)
1 comment:
I agree with you when you say that we need to eradicate corruption from the grassroots as the first step in reforming the nation...could you also highlight some examples where the Right to Information Act has played a pivotal role in this regard? I read an article in the Hindu which spoke about the corruption prevalent in the implementation of the NREGA(National Rural Employment Guarantee Act) in Bihar where a social activist was found murdered one day before he was going to show a major discrepancy in the audits...awareness is the key word here!
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