Beat ‘em Up:

July 20/2011: Soro in Balasore district has suddenly caught everyone’s attention because of a particular incident a few days ago. The story goes that a woman had bribed a District Inspector of Schools to get her ad hoc job to be made permanent. When he supposedly failed to honor his part of the deal, she went in to his office with a broom and a horde of journalists and thrashed the ‘evil’ DI. The bribe amount was supposedly Rs. 80,000. A big figure, for sure, for a lady who was desperate to get a job that does not pay all so very handsome an amount. And a great catch if the DI in reality got this amount since he could have collected similar sums from many others who would be expecting equal kinds of gratifications from him. It is reliably learnt that people pay huge amounts only when they are certain they will recoup the money while working in certain posts for the government.

Now, when we come to this particular case being discussed, it may be questioned as to how does a data entry operator, whose primary employers are the district’s DPC and OPEPA and the DI is a secondary employer, in some humble rural setting in Orissa, expect to make up so much of a financial loss through her job. It is anyone’s guess. The woman in question would obviously have remained happily silent if the DI had delivered. The brouhaha that we all see now is because the bribe giver felt cheated. After all, even rogues are supposed to follow certain principles.

We have all gotten quite used to the word ‘corruption’ lately. With scams flying all over the place, it might be ok to even become highly intolerant of bribe takers. But what we conveniently choose to forget is the bribe givers. Even in the big scams that have rocked the nation, the heads of the companies who had doled out huge sums to get their way are still working out routes to escape while the bribe takers are cooling their heels behind prison walls. What is worrying is that most of us take bribe giving as a non issue. Let us not forget that when there are no givers, takers would not exist. But instead of taking this thought forward and implementing in our day to day lives, we prefer to preach instead of practice.

Many of us are getting a little carried away with the idea of activism. With Anna Hazare and Baba Ramdev showing the path and many others following suit, the idea of crying hoarse against injustice and corruption in the system while doing nothing about it personally is gaining popularity. Many media reports have painted the above mentioned woman bribe giver as a hero, as someone who finally had the courage to take the law into her own hands to teach the corrupt a lesson. Pictures of the ‘brave’ woman with a broom in her hand, beating up the DI in his office might mislead some to think that she was probably fighting against the corrupt system for a just cause. But the truth is far from that. Most, if not all, of us might have behaved like this woman at some point of time in our lives. We speak up only when our personal cause gets compromised.

If we sit back and introspect, we will start to understand what kind of a people Indians have become. Speaking ill of others may be a great virtue for the Annas and the Ramdevs. Yet, most, if not all, of us are seemingly in a terrible hurry to get somewhere. We rush around and are incapable of being patient. Imagine an angler. He puts his hook, line and sinker and at the bottom there hangs the bait. In its greed and hurry to eat, the biggest fish invariably gets caught. The angler is left with no other responsibility but to reel back and take the fish back home for a hearty meal. Similarly, the corrupt of this nation are feeding on all of us because we are constantly hungry as well as in a hurry. Hunger for what and hurry to go where, no one really knows or cares to know.

Every single Indian wants her or his personal work to be done immediately. In the process, we miss the need to be perfect. We do not fill up forms fully. Forget to throw trash in the bins. Expect our children to do so very well in exams that we are willing to bribe teachers to get higher marks for our wards. Train or airline reservations must be got NOW. All the time it is this terrible fight against Cronus. So the angler is getting away rich. No matter how many students and ‘civil’ society bumpkins we may manage to gather wherever, we do not make any lasting impression on the state of affairs as we are in a big hurry to go on in life. For that we have no choice but to give money. This very hurry landed most of the Telecom companies in real hot water in the 2G scam issue. Most of them had not even filled in their application forms with complete details. This is a regular habit. Eventually, we just keep creating regulators and regulations. In spirit however, we desire that all these boundaries should vanish and “I” should be allowed to do whatever my feeble unthinking brain can muster energy to fantasize about. Yes, we do not have dreams, only fantasies.  The woman in Soro is a case in point that shows how our personal fantasy leads us all to try and glorify horrible mistakes we make.