Sunday, May 26, 2013

Why We Love Corruption

Let us accept this fact first. We all love the word 'corruption'. See how our eyes seek that word in the newspaper, how our ears perk up, how our netas and the media use that word to seduce and incite us.

It is a multi-billion dollar word. Not just for the actual corruption but for all the tamasha that happens later. The blackmailing, the fixing - surely it does happen after the news of corruption is flashed? Why certain reports get leaked, why certain people get targeted and why certain people get protected. Is that not corruption?

But the point is - why do we love corruption so much?

I'll hazard a few guesses. It gives us a chance to feel relatively pure. It makes us feel right. Even relieved that someone else got caught doing something most of us would - given an opportunity and the hope that we won't be found out.

Honesty can be a relative thing. Corruption is too. It is all about being found out.

The temptation exists in all of us. In one form or another. If we all loved plain old honesty a bit more than the seductive curves of corruption, it might help our cause a bit more than shouting ourselves hoarse about how we cannot stand corruption.

But honesty is plain and is ghar ka daal. It is not sexy or interesting.

The more I think of it the more I feel that we love corruption because we are all voyeurs. We are not doers - we are incapable of either fully honest or fully corrupt actions. We only love to watch. To clap when someone tells us to. To scream when someone does. To close our mouths in horror when someone does. We do not have enough guts to even initiate the applause.

It is so because we are fully corrupt. But what is worse is that the fully corrupt, the voyeurs, have not been caught. We might never be.


2 comments:

Madhav said...

I say we legalize corruption!!!!

SeagullFan said...

Corruption is something I'm very ambivalent towards. You cannot deny that many countries suffer due to corruption, but on the other hand it is do damn human! I live in Denmark, the least corrupt country in the world, and sometimes I wish it was less boy scout and more corrupt. In the rural areas were I grew up, most people do untaxed (black) work for friends and friends-of-friends. This is seen as corruption by the government because it misses out on tax money, but to the locals they are just helping out someone they know. Meanwhile, the same politicians are using underpaid philipinian girls as housemaids and sucking up to their financial and political aids to remain in power.

In my view, small time corruption can smooth the bureaucrat machinery and help serve the human being instead of the law because the law doesn't allow people to make mistakes or have human faults.