India has become a Nation of rule benders, I cannot think of any average person who is not knowingly breaking rules/laws while going about everyday life and we do not seem to care about and we do not face consequences of these actions – this is crux of our problem.
We cannot claim we are clean when we look the other way and bribe someone because we are not ready to stand-up and fight. We cannot be submitting bills that are doctored to get a few thousand rupees of tax exemption and worry about corrupt persons. We cannot be jumping signals, not wear helmet, talk on mobile phone while driving and when caught bribe our way out and still keep shaking our head thinking corruption is pervasive.
We cannot be registering our property for less than its value, buy Jewels with out receipt i.e indulge in any form of tax avoidance.
I do not in anyway imply what Anna Hazare is doing is not important, we are not having strong enough deterrent in place and hopefully the bill he is talking about will start creating deterrent. Once we can build a system where wrong doing will get punished in a timely manner things have a chance of improving.
One of the excuses I hear, oh I will change if everyone else is straight (or some variant of this)!! When will we stop indulging friends, relative who break rule of law. Most worrying aspect for me, we seem to be setting wrong precedents for our next generation (our kids) by showing them breaking rules/law is ok When I was growing-up my parents were drilling into me importance of rule of law and doing it the right way, not sure if I will able to emulate them ?!
Every time we break a rule or law, we are creating an opportunity for corruption to happen, so change starts with us if we want to … We cannot keep taking the easy way out and still shout from roof top what a pathetic country we live-in
The cynic in me makes me wonder are really people outraged about corruption itself or they envious of the corrupt because of the additional few Zeros we see in the numbers being floated around ? i.e corruption instead of merely being acceptable has reached unimaginable levels.
To summarize – we need to stop becoming rule/law breakers and we need to create deterrents so that rule/law breaking gets timely punishment and reinforces good behavior
Sathyamurthi's Blog 