In my youth, I was wooed for a while by a young man whose father was one of the biggest businessmen in Calcutta. The young man was intelligent, funny and had the ethics of a skunk. “Every one has a price,” was one of his pet phrases. I used to be infuriated every time he said it, and even more livid when he would set out to prove it.
Consider this case. His best friend had been trying to get close to an attractive girl from my college, for a while—with little success. She was a good student, belonged to a family of technocrats and refused to have anything to do with these rather loud scions of industrialist families. Undeterred, the two men did some checks and found she was crazy about music. They also discovered that her favourite band was coming to the city to perform and knew that she would give anything to be there. They knew she couldn’t afford to buy the astronomically-priced tickets. So they bought a bunch of tickets; put one of them in an envelope with a note which said something like ‘Pick you up at 6’ and dropped it off at her home. On D-day, the suitor showed up at her doorstep with his friend at the pre-ordained time. The girl emerged, dressed for the rock concert, and got into the car. “I told you so” glances were exchanged by the men, and the party drove off.
So what happened here? The boys obviously figured out the price of the girl’s company. Was what they did unethical? Or did the girl ‘sell out’? There was no monetary transaction involved, at least not directly, but the shadow of ‘bribery’ loomed large. Decades after the incident, I’m still not sure about the ethics of it all.
The dictionary describes corruption as “dishonest or fraudulent conduct by those in power, or the action of making someone or something morally depraved”. When I pay the delivery man extra for a gas cylinder (because the one I have booked won’t come for another week), I’m both being corrupt and abetting it. When I slip the ticket collector a `500 note to get me on a train without a reservation, it’s a clear case of bribery. But what do I call it when I, as an editor, ask one of my juniors to write a complimentary article on someone who does not deserve it? If it’s a company that will send advertisements our way, it is a clear case of corruption. But what if it is just a poor artist looking for publicity? And what about the young men hurrying to join the march against corruption at India Gate, who give a policeman a hundred rupees to let them past a barrier, because they’re already late? They’ve travelled 500 km at their own cost to join the protest because they feel strongly about the cause.
In Transparency International’s ranking of nations based on the level of corruption, India took 94th place (out of 176 nations) in 2012, from the 87th spot in 2010. And yet few of us think we’re personally corrupt. The phone calls to the influential; a hundred rupees here and there; free concert passes for people we want to please; these have become our currencies of social exchange. Corruption has replaced conversation as the most common medium of interaction (and transaction) between Indians. Is a reversal possible?
shampa@newindianexpress.com