The Price of Honesty

Bad news is everywhere. Spiralling cost of food, terrorist strikes, air crashes, police atrocities, Maoist attacks, new bridges collapsing, scams where thousands lose their life savings. Poaching in sanctuaries, human rights violations, farmer suicides, awful tax laws, vanishing species, attacks on schools and colleges, hospitals. Vaccines leading to deaths and students taking their own lives. Shrinking jobs, fewer investors, growing insurgency, staggering urban poverty, dangerous pollution levels. Match-fixing. Corruption in the army, mangroves destroyed by builders, trains blown up.

Crime, sleaze, insurgency, poverty, violence, they all start from one source: Corruption. But corruption is the only thing no one wants to discuss anymore. It's so all pervasive, so deeply entrenched that we have all come to believe we have no choice but to live with it. So we are busy trying to tackle other issues. Rahul Gandhi is trying to bring the rural poor back into the political reckoning. Pranab Mukherjee wants to offer us a new tax code. Manmohan Singh is talking about bringing back the billions stashed away by Indians in tax havens overseas. Chidambaram wants to involve the army in the war against Maoists. Jairam Ramesh is keen to rewrite the existing environment policies. Kapil Sibal is tinkering around with the education system. Murali Deora is obsessed with increasing fuel prices.

What no one figures is that at the heart of all of our problem lies corruption. If India can tame this monster, forget slaying it, many of these problems will simply disappear. How did the Kashmir problem begin? With the frustrations of local people when they saw the greedy politicians loot the State while the Centre turned a blind eye to their complaints. When they showed anger, they were called secissonists and the army was called in to silence them. How did the Maoists gain ground? Because the tribals kept losing their lands and means of livelihoods as rapacious politicians drove them out. These lands were then handed over to the mining mafia with whom our leaders shared the loot. How did the insurgency rear its head in the North East? Simply because the political parties in power grabbed the money sent to develop those seven states and gave the people absolutely nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Corruption is a hydra-headed monster that has grown so big, so all pervasive that we don't even acknowledge it anymore. Want to buy a train ticket? Pay a tout. Want a ration card? Pay a cop. Want a passport? Easy. Go to the passport office and there are guys hanging around there to fix it for you. Want an illegal water connection? Catch a guy working in the municipal corporation off hours. Want an electricity line? Your local slumlord will fix it for a fee. Anything you want, legal or illegal, has a price to it. Including, some say, the Padma Bhushan or a seat in the Parliament--and of course, any deal struck with a government agency. No, I'm saying it. The whole world is saying it today, making a mockery of this great nation.

What's worse is that corruption has reached a level today where it no longer stops at what you need. It involves even what is rightfully yours. Your electricity bill is wrong and you want it corrected? Pay a bribe. Your tax refund is due and all you need to do is pay some speed money if you want your cheque. You have won a government tender? Awesome. Now, if you don't want the minister to interfere in reversing the deal, go and settle this with his secretary. The system has now started using corruption as a lever to harrass us from getting what is rightfully ours. Pensions are held up for years. Fake cases are filed on frivolous grounds. Files mysteriously disappear from government offices. Some universities fail to give you a valid marksheet. You have to pay under the table get duplicates. Do you have any idea how much our policemen have to pay as bribes to get their postings and promotions? No wonder, they try to extort you when they catch you.

I'm afraid since it's a topic I can go on and on. As a journalist, I have spent years trying to save people from becoming corrupt. It's not easy. Sometimes, it's even dangerous since the corrupt are brilliantly networked. You threaten one guy and twenty others elsewhere jump up and begin harassing you. Cases crop up from nowhere. Demands multiply manifold. I am frustrated today because, earlier, like millions of other Indians, I had a choice. I had a choice to pay a bribe or not. If I didn't want to, I could fight my way through. It took much longer but it was still achievable.

That's no longer true since our choices have shrunk. We are all the prisoners of corruption today. If you refuse to pay a bribe, the whole system falls on your head as if to make an example out of you. If we cannot eradicate this right now, India's problems will only get worse. The problems faced by the "aam aadmi" will multiply. There will be no peace until there's justice. And there will be no justice till the honest are allowed to live honestly.