Sunday, 22 December 2013

Self-discipline - a path to corruption free "Super Power" India




Have you ever bribed someone?


I asked this question to my colleagues and friends and most of them answered in the negative. However after discussing scenarios they accepted that while bribery was never the intention, the circumstance may have caused their action to be a bribe indirectly. Honestly, if I prove myself and ask if I have ever paid bribe, the answer is an embarrassing yes. I have seen multiple cases of corruption and wanted to highlight my point of view. How can we uproot corruption from our day to day lives before questioning the actions of our neighbor’s, leaders, the government and all systems around us?


 If we start changing ourselves and follow discipline, we will see the change reflected around us.

"Be the change that you wish to see in the world" said Mahatma Gandhi.




To change ourselves, we must be able to identify the aspect to be changed. The most important insight I derived from my conversations with friends is that most of the unintended bribe is due to lack of awareness or understanding of the system, and an inability to identify a certain act as bribe. For instance, let's consider the queue system. It is very common to see many people breaking the queue and moving ahead without considering others who are waiting. Is this merely a lack of discipline, or is it this intrinsic behavior that translates to corrupt practices?



I do not have a clear answer. Do you have?


I always dream of "India as Super Power". Several questions come to my mind and I have frequent discussions with my friends to understand the root cause of corruption and find correlation with some dependent attribute that can help start the eradication of corruption from India. Here is a formula I have figured out after thorough thought and analysis.

Corruption is indirectly proportional to self-discipline and public awareness in the country. Self-discipline implies that people do not always want to get ahead of themselves and use any means to achieve a selfish end. A transparent system means it is easier to build more awareness of policies systems and processes to the general public. An aware and disciplined individual is very unlikely to follow corrupt practices. This can also avoid a huge chunk of unintended bribery, thus disabling the corrupt individuals who accept such bribes shamelessly. While “JANLOKPAL” and proper judicial system play a major role in making India less corrupt, this is only for a part of the county. If we really need to oust corruption, we need to build awareness as well as discipline.

Here's a corruption story that I would like to share. My friend had applied for his passport online, but did not get a PRO appointment for a month. I guess it was not wrong to believe that we have a strong system and at least for an appointment we need not bribe someone. However after a month my highly disappointed friend starts searching for an agent who can help him get an appointment. Finally after paying some agent fees, my friend was able to get an appointment and take his passport application forward. A few weeks after this incident, my friend couldn't stop complaining about how corrupt our systems are because he couldn’t even get an appointment after his online application. I decided to check this out and applied for an appointment myself. I got a commendably quick and satisfying response and pointed it out to my friend. On deeper probing, I found that my friend had not read the alert message which clearly stated the appointment timings and was trying for an invalid time. 

If my educated friend was able to read a simple message correctly, he need not have paid bribe to book his appointment. Friends, my whole point here is that if you have more degrees it does not mean you are also socially aware. Resorting to alternate means without exploring the set systems and processes can turn into bribery and corruption.
 




As per transparency International  CORRUPTION IS THE ABUSE OF ENTRUSTED POWER FOR PRIVATE GAIN. IT HURTS EVERYONE WHO DEPENDS ON THE INTEGRITY OF PEOPLE IN A POSITION OF AUTHORITY
We have got some interesting stats on corruption, while India positioned 94/174 in global corruption perception index with 34/100 score, however Indian Corporate have shown good performance and are world leader in “Transparency in corporate Reporting”, reported by International Transparency 



Organization.

  As per below  graph you can clearly able to figure out of top 10 company in the world, 8 from India and within that TATA is a leading brand.



Friends, you may wondering why I have quoted “Transparency in corporate Reporting” and given example of Indian corporate as world leader?

Yes, I want to say we have both aspect of life, one is positive “Corporate system”, other is negative, “Indian government and functionary” and my take here is if we can make strong system like TATA have as well as make more transparent system and follow the same with discipline, we will able to become super power.

However other point here I want to mention is, if you have strong system but no discipline you are inviting corruption directly or indirectly like case of “SATYAM”.
Every literate person should become socially aware and follow route of discipline then no-one can stop India from becoming as Next super power.

Jai Hind
I am eagerly waiting for your feedback and suggestions and to hear such stories from your side.
 
Source : http://pickyouropinion.com/


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