Tricky situation, needs tricky solution

Tricky situation, needs tricky solution – In an act of corruption, victim is punished.

If I am mugged at knife point, I give away what the thief wants, due to fear of my life and to get out of the situation safely, that moment. Later, I go to a Police Station and register a compliant. For this I shall not be prosecuted. Rephrase the same situation in a scenario when I want to obtain a certificate from a government authority. If I do not bribe the public servant, he would reject or delay my request based on the billion technicalities that arises in issuing the certificate. So to get out of that situation I pay the bribe the public servant and get out of that situation at that moment. However if I later go to the police station and try lodging a compliant, I am also prosecutable. So the only option I have is to suffer the crime silently. The rejection or delay is like the knife. Presently, in this situation I am expected to fight the thief directly and get out of the situation. The system does not offer me any protection from this kind of crime.

Problem: If I fight against corruption, I am further victimised by delays and denial of just facilities that should accrue to me.

Solution: Fixing the onus of honesty on the authority. I suggest that the onus of being honest, incorruptible be made on the public servant. The citizen should be absolved of all responsibilities of indulging in corruption. In fact citizens should be given the right to fight against the corruption after the act is committed as in the case of theft. The following can be some scenarios which would occur due to this.

Scenario 1: I go to a government department and seek a certificate. If the babu asks for bribe, I just pay the bribe get the certificate. Later I go to a police station / lokpal and lodge a compliant that the babu took bribe from me. The court can simply punish the babu if he is found to have acquired more wealth than his means.

Scenario 2: I go to a government department and seek a certificate. I do not have the required eligibility and the babu does not take bribe. I get angry, go to a police station and lodge a compliant that the babu sought bribe from me. The babu can prove his innocence by showing proof that the application is insufficient / ineligible. In this case I can be prosecuted under false implication, defamation and obstruction of deliverance of government duty (maximum punishment can be made mandatory for this).

Scenario 3: I go to a government department and seek a certificate. I do not have the required eligibility and the babu issues the certificate by taking bribe. A third party goes to a police station and lodge a compliant regarding the act of corruption. The babu can be punished for taking the bribe and I can be punished for obtaining a certificate by providing false / insufficient information (Not for bribing)

Expected results: In such a situation, the babu will not indulge in the first scenario and I will not indulge in the second scenario. The third scenario is still possible, but any affected party will take care of 50% of this situation.

Ego

I work for an organization that has made remarkable progress in the past decades and has, in many ways, changed the way India, and the world, banks. You can have great experiences in this organization. One of the company’s innovations is a quarterly video news magazine, through which the top management of the company communicates with the approx. 40k employees, among other updates. One such magazine covered our ex-chairman's address at one of the bank’s events. The point of this article is to capture my understanding, of the beauty with which he articulated the essence of EGO and its effect on our lives.

“Ego (or arrogance as expressed or vanity as observed) can be because of three reasons”, he said. “It can be because of wealth, beauty or knowledge”

Vanity, by nature, will blind one’s vision; alienate one from the world and thus one’s own life. Friends will become fewer and far apart; one would be surrounded by selfish people, who would eventually disappear at the time of redemption. Once disillusioned of the make-believe world one has been living in, the egoistic person experiences shock in understanding the futility of such pursuit. At this time, depending on how far one has gone from friends, one gets help to recover and get grounded. The magnitude of the shock and the distance from true friends are generally directly proportional to the length of time one has been egoistic. Longer the time spent in vanity, larger the shock and farther true friends would have gone.

The ego that arises due to beauty is probably the shortest lived. It will wither in comparison, or in time. In a fundamentally firm mind, the ego will also wither; the person shall age gracefully and go back to one's true friends. In a weak mind, the ego will grow into frustration and seclude the person. So there is a 50:50 chance of recovery from the drudgery of the ego effect, in this case.

The ego, that is due to wealth, will wither with one downturn in the finances. Even in this case, one has a 50:50 chance of recovery. The strong minded shall get well grounded, fight back and comeback only stronger and humbler. A weak mind would again force one into seclusion and bitterness.

The ego that arises from knowledge is the most dangerous. This does not give any chance for the person to recover. Knowledge, with age shall only grow. As knowledge grows, the ego will get reinforced. When the creative mind sees results to its ideas and efforts, and one is able to encash these ideas, it is but natural to start believing that one is invincible. With this, one’s vanity will increase till one becomes completely blind of the real world. This goes on for a long time. Normally one is already 60 or above by the time one is shocked out of this vanity. The shock is huge, due to the length of time one has been hibernating in such vanity. By this time all friends are gone, and the few left behind are not strong enough to help one recover. Trust me, this is one of the worst times in human life to face the fact of the futility of one’s pursuit in life, as most of the useful life is over. There might have been very few people who might have recovered from such a shock. It is not uncommon to see intellectuals secluding themselves from the world at older age. This is generally mistaken for superiority complex. It is actually true that these people exhibit superiority complex. The truth is also that superiority complex is actually a guise to hide inferiority complex, self doubt or self pity.

“So my dear friends, be wary of the ego that you all may get associated with, in this profession. Humility is reality. If you are capable of doing or knowing something, remember, a million others are capable of doing the same with different degrees of expertise. So nobody in this world is worthy of such ego”

After listening to this, I was shocked. “Oh, one has to be good looking or wealthy or knowledgeable to be egoistic is it?” I asked myself.