All men have their price...
... And it is approximately equal to hundred times the salary they receive. I may be wrong in my approximation, but all I know is that it is somewhere about there. All you females out there, wipe that silly grin off your face. When I meant men, I meant it in a worldly sense and men obviously includes you. So, having finished with all the formalities, let's get straight into the topic.
There is no doubt that, at any point of time in your lives, you would have seen many a monetary bartering system ( Damn, it sounds so nice and sophisticated, but what i meant was bribery!! ) at different levels of hierarchy. There is no disputing the fact that bribing takes place at the lowest levels, as low as a clerk's assistant level. And as we go up the hierarchy, the bribe increases ten-fold and you most probably lose whatever you have saved for a rainy day. I assure you, at any given time, at any place, just start up the topic of bribery and see what stories people can dole out. Almost everyone's got a say on bribery. Ok, here's what happened to me some time back.
I had just finished learning to ride on a defunct old TVS and I wanted a license and pestered my father to get me one. He, promptly, as a good old father should do, handed me some money, and asked me to go to the RTO with my cousin, who also wanted a license. Well, 15 is an age where everyone is excited by the silliest of things in the world, and I thought that having a license to ride is a 'license to kill' ( I almost did that one day, but that's another story!!) . So, on the D-day, much to the embarassment of my cousin, I was jumping all over the place with a sheepish grin on my face.
And then, we had to contact a guy, who was an agent here and we had to deal through him. This guy made us 'small fry' wait for a long time in his shed and went after the 'big fish'. After he returned, he outright told me I wont get a license here and I had to go to some other place to get it done. Anyways, my cousin had to get it done and he asked my cousin to fill up some forms. They asked him all the usual stuff about what he is, where he is from and so on. My cousin got bored of all this and he asked me to do it, which I did with a lot of enthusiasm ( He still believes that the demented kinda photo on his license was my mistake, even though i reason out with him and tell him that it was an on the spot photo!! ). So, after all the literary stuff is over, the agent takes back the papers, scrutinises them ( that's what he did, I think!! ) , tells us that everything is in order and places it neatly on a the top of a pile.
Suddenly, he leans forward and asks us to do so too. He told us that the license would take about 350 rupees and he could get it done immediately for us. My cousin, the ever careful guy, asks him the actual cost of the licence. This guy tells us that it's about 150 or so, but he needed to give something for the officer inside and he also needed to survive with his family and all that crap. I mean, if he doesn't take the extra money, is his family going to go to the dogs? We tell him we'll do it the hard way ( Which ironically is the right way!!) and as we walk away, he asks us for 10 rupees for a cup of tea. I mean, this is the limit. Just 10 minutes back, he tries stealing an amount ten times that.
So, we get into the building and we are shocked to see the posters " Agent system is abolished" , "Bribery is a punishable offence " etc etc etc. And beneath the posters, all these agents handle their 'transactions'. So, with everything, including the photo done, we wait for the call to the preliminary test for a learner's license. Then, I get accustomed to the Modus Operandi of these guys. If the candidate sent in is a guy whom an agent knows, he's asked to put a namaste to the officer and just point out in the direction of the door once and the officer knows that he has got an additional 100 rupees into his already fat pocket. This candidate comes out peacefully, assured that he gets his license. My cousin had a hard time inside, but Im proud to tell that he passed the test with flying colours ( note: my driving is much better than his!! ) .
So, what is the Indian government doing? Why is it recruiting such immoral people and degrade the already poverty stricken country? Are these people getting inspired by characters such as Bangaru laxman and the likes of him? What motivates all these people to commit such henious acts? Or is there so much pressure from the family that a man has to extract money from different sources? Is this the country that is 'Saare Jahaan Se Accha'? Is this the country that Gandhiji and the other freedom fighters fought for, with their sweat and blood? Are we not, the sons and daughters of this soil, raping Mother India, who is already covered with a tattered and a dust ridden cloth? When will we come out of this tunnel of ignorance and shame? When will we see the light? What are our objectives for the development of the country? When are we going to make India a force to reckon with? These are some of the many questions that we need to answer and implement upon.
There is no doubt that, at any point of time in your lives, you would have seen many a monetary bartering system ( Damn, it sounds so nice and sophisticated, but what i meant was bribery!! ) at different levels of hierarchy. There is no disputing the fact that bribing takes place at the lowest levels, as low as a clerk's assistant level. And as we go up the hierarchy, the bribe increases ten-fold and you most probably lose whatever you have saved for a rainy day. I assure you, at any given time, at any place, just start up the topic of bribery and see what stories people can dole out. Almost everyone's got a say on bribery. Ok, here's what happened to me some time back.
I had just finished learning to ride on a defunct old TVS and I wanted a license and pestered my father to get me one. He, promptly, as a good old father should do, handed me some money, and asked me to go to the RTO with my cousin, who also wanted a license. Well, 15 is an age where everyone is excited by the silliest of things in the world, and I thought that having a license to ride is a 'license to kill' ( I almost did that one day, but that's another story!!) . So, on the D-day, much to the embarassment of my cousin, I was jumping all over the place with a sheepish grin on my face.
And then, we had to contact a guy, who was an agent here and we had to deal through him. This guy made us 'small fry' wait for a long time in his shed and went after the 'big fish'. After he returned, he outright told me I wont get a license here and I had to go to some other place to get it done. Anyways, my cousin had to get it done and he asked my cousin to fill up some forms. They asked him all the usual stuff about what he is, where he is from and so on. My cousin got bored of all this and he asked me to do it, which I did with a lot of enthusiasm ( He still believes that the demented kinda photo on his license was my mistake, even though i reason out with him and tell him that it was an on the spot photo!! ). So, after all the literary stuff is over, the agent takes back the papers, scrutinises them ( that's what he did, I think!! ) , tells us that everything is in order and places it neatly on a the top of a pile.
Suddenly, he leans forward and asks us to do so too. He told us that the license would take about 350 rupees and he could get it done immediately for us. My cousin, the ever careful guy, asks him the actual cost of the licence. This guy tells us that it's about 150 or so, but he needed to give something for the officer inside and he also needed to survive with his family and all that crap. I mean, if he doesn't take the extra money, is his family going to go to the dogs? We tell him we'll do it the hard way ( Which ironically is the right way!!) and as we walk away, he asks us for 10 rupees for a cup of tea. I mean, this is the limit. Just 10 minutes back, he tries stealing an amount ten times that.
So, we get into the building and we are shocked to see the posters " Agent system is abolished" , "Bribery is a punishable offence " etc etc etc. And beneath the posters, all these agents handle their 'transactions'. So, with everything, including the photo done, we wait for the call to the preliminary test for a learner's license. Then, I get accustomed to the Modus Operandi of these guys. If the candidate sent in is a guy whom an agent knows, he's asked to put a namaste to the officer and just point out in the direction of the door once and the officer knows that he has got an additional 100 rupees into his already fat pocket. This candidate comes out peacefully, assured that he gets his license. My cousin had a hard time inside, but Im proud to tell that he passed the test with flying colours ( note: my driving is much better than his!! ) .
So, what is the Indian government doing? Why is it recruiting such immoral people and degrade the already poverty stricken country? Are these people getting inspired by characters such as Bangaru laxman and the likes of him? What motivates all these people to commit such henious acts? Or is there so much pressure from the family that a man has to extract money from different sources? Is this the country that is 'Saare Jahaan Se Accha'? Is this the country that Gandhiji and the other freedom fighters fought for, with their sweat and blood? Are we not, the sons and daughters of this soil, raping Mother India, who is already covered with a tattered and a dust ridden cloth? When will we come out of this tunnel of ignorance and shame? When will we see the light? What are our objectives for the development of the country? When are we going to make India a force to reckon with? These are some of the many questions that we need to answer and implement upon.
posted by Sudarshan J at 11:49 PM
3 Comments:
Welcome aboard blogging dude!
lol... me too had a similar experience.. check out my peppered-with-fiction post on a similar thing.. http://philophart.blogspot.com/2006/05/kinetic.html
Strong words, but I'm not really sure if we can look at it from such an acutely logical viewpoint. There is _so_ much more to a person degrading to the level of silencing his conscience, and all the Pillars of Honesty and Foundations of Truth cannot hold him up..I'm definitely not in _favor_ of such things happening, but all I ask is that you see it in a softer perspective.
Lovely article though, keep blogging!
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