Shall we put in jail a person who is suffering from a viral fever? Shall we hang a person who is suspected to be having Swine-flu? The answer is certainly not. The person who is corrupt or infected with corruption is in same situation as those two persons with physical illness. Earlier there were few occasions in human history that noticed above mentioned situations come true.
The illness occurs when a living thing becomes weak or when it is suffering with less food. In other terms, whenever a living organism unable to satisfy its needs, eventually it falls sick. Surroundings and environment also play their part. In an unfavorable circumstances metabolism of organism doesn’t work properly. The organism fights for survival in any possible way. It does not have either time or proper thinking mechanism to test whether that is the right way or not.
When everything is ordered in a fashionable manner, no one even tempted to do wrong deed. But when requirements are more and sources are less, then a negative potential surrounds the effected person. That person is pulled towards the positive fruits to neutralize him/herself in any of the possible ways. It doesn’t matter whether it is acceptable way to all or not beyond certain situation from where the deceased cannot cope-up with negative potential. None of the social laws works there. This situation is inevitable for a society with near extinction.
There is another situation where the society condition is not that bad. Many of the people are in a situation to satisfy many of their needs. But they still attracted towards some mischievous acts. This can be explained.
In Psychology labs Monkeys and some other animals are being observed on their behavior. They are trained to act in certain way by providing rewards for their most sought acts. Though humans are hugely evolved animals, they also have their own disadvantages. They highly react for temporary or short term motives. Many people don’t bother for long term reactions/results. They are happy with immediate reward to their deed whatever its nature (certainly a profit for then). They are ready to repeat it and they can even do it in more rigorous manner than earlier, if there is a possibility to gain more.
Whatever this behavior may be resulted with, either may be due to laziness to think broadly or may be due to busy life, the woman/man is not interested in long-term outcome of certain deed. S/he is somehow unable to analyze the act versus result properly. Woman/man tends to judge with the short term results and continues in the way in which s/he got short term rewards.
A person with extra-ordinary values may also get corrupted in the course of time as s/he loses his/her excellence in analyzing the action-reward situation. How fast s/he becomes corrupt depends on how s/he takes and relates the reward to her/his old deeds for justification. It depends on the quantity of corruptness s/he can accept for that time, and the need of that reward at her/his situation. No one is born corrupt or corruptness cannot be achieved in a day or two. The small officer may start with small amount, say 10 bucks, and it is nothing to be considered as a crime. But the officer enjoys, and the enjoyment drives towards more enjoyment. The journey starts. The officer might have struggled at first whether ‘taking 10 bucks’ would be wrong or right. Later on struggle recedes. Eventually analyzing capabilities dies out. Now, for this officer new laws exist. Beyond the point what s/he thinks is only wrong and rest is right.
Not only the officer. Everyone in our society or in any society is somewhat suffering from this illness. The thief, the killer or a mafia leader along with a corrupt cannot be produced in a day or two and especially those are not aliens. They are byproducts of our society. They are the resultant of the way the society lives and its disability to rely on and follow its prescribed values. In other way they are physical accumulated form of disorders of all individuals in the society. The minute corruptness or disorder of every individual manifested as a corrupt, thief or a terrorist in the society.
Cure...? Yes. It is there. Let us discuss it on another day.
Hi Arun, the article was very good and thought provoking. The way you have supported your point by comparing with Psychology labs is awesome. Loved reading it.
ReplyDeleteBut I have two queries/suggestions:
1) In the current scenario where there are more number of Reliance Fresh stores than normal vegetable markets, more number of shopping malls than normal cloth showrooms, more number of multiplex theaters than normal cinema theaters how can we expect a traffic police to maintain his family with 4K per month as his salary???? What kind of appraisals does he get and gets his salary revised??? When a celebrity takes 5crores for a 30 sec commercial advertisement no one raises any query for that. But when a traffic police charges a fine of Rs.100, it is disclaimed with the word CORRUPTION. I don't mean to say that we should encourage Corruption. But we people cannot do anything. Govt. should take proper care to eradicate this by giving them sufficient benefits.
2) Everyone points only the person who is accepting the bribe but not the one who is giving. In my opinion both are culprits. Let us suppose you have gone to a Govt office to get signature of MRO. If they say that it would take 10-15 days as there were many pending files to be cleared and then only your file will be approved, surely you will be tempted to give some considerable amount and get it cleared as soon as possible. Here the person who gives the bribe is the primary culprit. There is no mistake from MRO side as he is getting extra pay for doing the same task. we cannot ask him to get satisfied with only what he is getting. As it is not the human nature. If human thinks in such a way we would have been roaming naked, eat raw food and behave like animals. We can never be satisfied with what we have unless someone restricts us.
Welcome to this blog Ananth. Thanks for your contribution against disorders in society. The two example you gave are striking straight onto the core major problems of our society. First example is on inequality and the second is on irresponsibility and selfishness. For every thing first comes, 'we' then everything else, gvt... etc. Sometimes my thinking goes to find answer to a question what is the reason behind all these disorders. I came to a conclusion that we are lacking a strong philosopher, if not inside us, even we don't have one at present times outside to us. If one exists he or she would have taken all the responsibility for whatever the wrong happening. That one feels ashamed of even a small wrong deed, eg. a small child abuse by his/her own parent, done at 1000km far but in his/her society. Here I'm quoting an ideal situation which probably took place in Ayodhya kingdom at the times of Rama. We can take Rama as perfect responsible person and philosopher.
ReplyDeleteA responsible philosopher sees what's wrong in being reluctant to an unlawful act done outside his society. He sees how a small selfish desire could change the fate of his entire kingdom in coming few decades.
The present situation of our society has its roots in unwanted things that happened decades back. It is each and every one of us responsibility to accept the ground truth, to understand situation, to find the solution and to act accordingly to solve each and every problem of society one by one.