"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings."
Cassius, Julius Caesar (I, ii, 140-141)
One often gets to hear and read this thing about us, in a democracy, getting the politicians that we deserve. This clamour had hit a feverish pitch during the last general elections in 2009. From Facebook status messages to tweets, the underlying message was this: we should elect politicians who are clean. One year down the line, even a cursory look at the day’s headlines would tell us that it is corruption which rules the day. If the news of the times are not bad enough, those are rendered murkier by the fact that all and sundry come across as dirty. They appear clean only if you want to see them clean. In the mud-slinging that has been unabated in Parliament, as well as outside of it through the obliging media, the mud sticks on everyone.
So, how did it come to this?
The answer, ironically and unfortunately, lies in the axiomatic truth about us getting the politicians we deserve. And the answer, let me tell you, lies hidden in this very declaration. You obviously miss the forest for the trees when you twist a statement out of its context and try to suit your own objective – in this case, of grilling politicians. [To start with, not many even know who had written this, in the first place. The answer is Samuel Taylor Coleridge.]
We don’t get corrupt politicians because we elect them; but because we ourselves are corrupt as a society. One is not talking of individuals here. Politicians, after all, don’t drop from the skies; they rise as members of this same society. Corruption is ingrained in our societal genes.
I see corruption all around me, day in and out. The sweeper who comes to collect the garbage won’t do a cleaner job than he does. He wants an extra dole. The guards at my complex gate are quite like the archetypal babus of government offices – they need extra for everything. Once I step outside the gate, I have to fight with the autorickshaw drivers – they will never ply by the meter. I could go on, but you get the drift. You should be seeing it all around too. Those who indulge in these everyday, all-pervading instances of corruption are not our politicians.
Corruption is an economic practice – it has its demand and supply components. You cannot eradicate corruption unless you tackle both the giver and the taker. For every instance of a person asking for a bribe, or even just imploring for more than is due, you have another person who wants to corrupt an individual just because s/he wants some rules to be bent.
If you are honest and upright individual in a position to get some things done, you will know what I am talking about. If you aren’t, then ask someone who is. You will know the pressures that an honest citizen has to endure. These pressures come from all quarters.
Of course, the issue of corruption is not as simplistic as it may sound here. There is a morbid tendency to associate corruption simply to politicians caught in a scam. Corruption, in fact, is much more. Corruption can be acts of acts of omission or commission, and includes bribery, extortion, cronyism, nepotism, patronage, graft, and embezzlement. The more you extend the definition, the more you will realise how difficult it is to eradicate. It is everywhere.
Whenever you get to see debates on corruption on television, what everyone, you will notice, agrees at the end of the show is that the issue of corruption is systemic problem. What they refuse to acknowledge is that no law can end this malaise. Just asking for more stringent and draconian laws does not solve the problem, because the contention miserably fails to understand and define what we keep referring to as the “system”.
There is no such thing as a system, as we are given to understand. It is a myth, perpetrated by unending arguments about the flaws lying in our legal system. The hidden answer to Coleridge’s statement lies in Shakespeare’s writings. We can’t keep blaming politicians for all ills such as corruption that plague our country. It is the roots that are corrupt.
