By Rajshekhar Pant
Forget the vast canvas of the nation and the world for a moment. Look around instead. Recall those faces that society calls respectable and eminent —people whose names you are compelled to suffix with a deferential ‘ji’, whether you wish to or not. Think of the leaders, public representatives and bureaucrats whom circumstances force you to treat as your superiors—often far above you. And then remember that “honourable” figure, accused of everything from commission-taking to far worse crimes, whose certificate of character you must somehow obtain before the system will grant you what is legitimately yours.
Recall also the “head clerk” in the department who makes a person run from pillar to post for weeks in order to receive the pension arrears of his deceased father—only to clear the payment the very next day once a fixed percentage of the amount has quietly changed hands. Encounters of this kind are the destiny of ordinary citizens like you and me. We live in a time when our social morality, our inherited values and our civic institutions appear to be slowly withering away.
In such circumstances, one is reminded of a remark made decades ago by Ayn Rand. Its essence runs somewhat like this:
“When you see that in order to produce anything you must obtain permission from those who themselves produce nothing; when wealth flows not to those who deal in goods but to those who deal in favours and patronage; when people grow rich not through work but through corruption, and the law is not merely unable to protect you from them but actually protects them against you; when corruption is rewarded and honesty turns into an act of self-destruction—then you may know that your society has begun to rot.”
The observation of Pope Francis that the price of corruption is always paid by the lowest sections of society is as true as the equally obvious fact that corruption almost always spreads from the top downward. The reason is simple: those who occupy the upper rungs of society often stand practically above the law. Our legal and administrative systems frequently grant them a degree of impunity—and that impunity becomes the first brick in the foundation of corruption.
In societies where institutions meant to protect the public interest become little more than handmaidens of a corrupt order, this process deepens further. Observe the conduct of our political leaders and bureaucrats. They are invariably more indulgent towards those who think as they do, and far less tolerant of those who might disagree with them.
Long ago, Friedrich Nietzsche remarked that the easiest way to corrupt a young mind is to teach it to treat those who agree with it more generously than those who think differently. Our own system—still carrying the ghost of a feudal mindset on its shoulders—appears to impart precisely this lesson, from schools and colleges to universities and training institutions.
Against such a background, the ordinary citizen gradually learns a painful truth: confronting corruption is rarely within his means. Paying a few thousand rupees to a clerk in order to secure a legitimate pension payment is simply easier than engaging in a prolonged and uncertain struggle against the system itself. Slowly, he begins to understand that resisting the system is not a practical option.
Hollow sermons of idealism do not fill a man’s belly, nor do they ensure him a dignified life. To confront a corrupt order on an empty stomach—armed only with a wooden sword—is often nothing short of suicidal. In such a system, bowing before corruption is not the moral failure of the common person; it becomes their compulsion. And perhaps nothing signals the decay of a society more starkly than this.
(The author is an amateur filmmaker, a photographer, and a writer, who has written over a thousand write-ups, reports, etc., published in the leading newspapers and magazines of the country. He can be reached at pant.rajshekhar@gmail.com)
