Look around and try and spot areas where corruption has been in the headlines and is most talked about. From our judiciary to the police, from civil society to legislation, from natural resources to public services, from land administration to tax administration, from individuals who yield power to those who are powerless, corruption weaves them all into one big chunk that makes us shout in despair, ‘Out with corruption!’
However, things do not stop with dharnas, rallies, social media rants, and debates on every possible platform. They move on fast to… but wait, I think things never move on this fast because the distance between reporting of corruption to diagnosing issues has obstacles in-built in the system. The system, some say, is built to encourage corrupt practices though the same system has safe-guards present that effectively identify such incidents and remembers them all. These are data chunks that have the power to create pathways that lead to predicting corruption points. For instance, if there is a report of land use being surreptitiously changed in one part of the country to benefit a set of builders, administration, and maybe politicians there will be many other such cases yet in their nascent stages that may be nipped in the bud, so to say. At least there will be a massive amount of awareness that will finally lead to a nation-wide recognition of this act as undesirable. People then get together to force the think-tank to find ways to counter corruption in the system. Corruption thus not only creates a nation-wide cohesive network of minds that pushes social evolution but also highlights the need for solutions.
Corruption has always been a part of every kind of society that we have lived in. Going back in history places us face-to-face with corruption that makes its appearances in myriad forms. From traitors who gave away secrets in exchange for rewards to those who promoted the interest of a certain segment of traders to increase their profits by forcing others to give up or turn to newer trades. Since times immemorial corruption cases have been reported, analysed, predicted, and sometimes even prescriptions have been forwarded. This is the flow of things that still happens.
Let us examine what happens to new political parties with excellent ideas for reformation, new companies with products that are poised to make an impact, and individuals with brilliant theories who lack the power of experience and appeal. In each case there will always be established institutions and powerful individuals ruling the scene with their stale and over-used concepts. The rise to become someone who gets heard is invariably through paths where progress is made by methods that may not be ethical. There are hundreds of corruption stories doing the round for every new regional political party, for instance. So long as these political parties stands by their format of creating a better life, their rise to power by buying loyalties of other politicians who already have a following is a fact that cannot be under-scored. There will always be cases where an able junior administrator compromises with a few decisions to ensure his rise to a position of power and then begins his policy of clean-up. All the cases of artists from different genres who had to do the unthinkable to keep on with progress in their chosen field of art finally gives us a few individuals who create lasting works of art. The risk here is that there will be those who get so addicted to corrupt practices that they end up losing the fine vision they had in their growing period and end up being nothing but glorious victims of corruption. Thus it isn’t corruption that needs to be despised but those who have used it to move up but did not know when or how to let go that is at fault. Corruption itself is nothing but an innocent victim of opinions.
It isn’t that embracing corruption is the only way to stardom. It is just that corrupt practices have the ability to gobble up long distances of anonymity in ways that only some understand. Those who understand this enigma called corruption must also, as a rule, understand that they are treading slippery grounds and must get off it as fast as possible when they have reached a reasonable distance. When they don’t, they are anyway trapped by corruption itself. Corruption is unforgiving, even to its perpetrators. History is full of such examples. Corruption becomes a problem when greed overtakes it.
This leads us to another interesting aspect of corruption. It is that one incident generally highlights other forms of corruption that may have gone unnoticed for years. For instance, when fraud lawyers Melbourne discovers
one form of banking fraud, there are hundreds of other ways in which banking officials have been hood-winking their way through legal and regulatory flaws that got investigated. Corruption revealed goes on to reveal other hidden corrupt formulations.
Corruption is like a hydra that multiplies every time one limb is chopped off. Each new limb understands better where it had gone wrong and creates new ways of countering exposure. Corruption is a lot smarter than newer virus strains that simply learn to survive in adverse conditions. Like some of these new strains of virus, even corruption gets wilder, more daring, and straps on new forms of protective armour. The only redeeming factor here is that corruption, when caught, has a cache of remedies that are also stored in its folds. I think society and corruption are in some ways running an endless marathon and both are, as yet, unwilling to give up. Both are resilient and in many ways, immortal. Hating corruption is not a solution because hatred makes it accelerate. Exposing corruption slows it down a bit and this has been going on for ages.
Am I suggesting that each of us is infected with corruption? Yes. Look deep down within your own self and recognize the times when you progressed sitting on a false premise and you’ll know that corruption isn’t always about big amounts of money exchanged. We reach our destined summits with bits and pieces of our progress stained with moments when we broke that traffic law or when we accepted payment to voice an opinion that we never agreed to or we acquired something by walking the wrong way… and the list is endless. But remember there is a tangible difference between progress and evolution. Corruption infects our dreams to progress but stays away from evolution. Evolution begins when progress is no longer attractive.
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Corruption infects our dreams to progress but stays away from evolution. Evolution begins when progress is no longer attractive.
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Arvind Passey
20 July 2018
