Friday 20 February 2015

FIGHTING CORRUPTION – The Battle starts within


What ails our country? It has all the natural resources, man power, cultural values and ethos, yet it has poverty, illiteracy and poor socio economic development. One reason that comes across is that “everyone in our country knows what to do but not able turn ideas into actions”. 

Acting decisively is not a simple task.  Situations arise every second, where one ends up taking right/wrong decisions.  The difficulty level of making a decision increases with the number of variables that have to be factored in, apart from the limitations in knowledge and information.  The individual who has to take the decision is indeed operating in an unenviable situation.  One does take wrong decision at times and learn from it. In fact, very often, learning how to do a job comes only ‘hands on’.  To err is indeed human. 

In a perfectly understanding environment, persons will not hesitate to make decisions and act on it. The increased levels of transparency and activism in various levels, however, have posed challenges to the decision maker.  It is definitely a major factor that weighs in the thoughts and action of the decision maker and unfortunately leads to a status quo approach.  After all, how does one differentiate between genuine errors of judgment from the deliberate/corrupt ones?  Hence ‘somehow ideas are not implemented’.  The vacuum created unfortunately  allows corruption to grow.

In such a scenario, turning ideas into action requires persons with integrity.  What is integrity? An old Tamil phrase comes to my mind for defining a person with integrity.  When roughly translated, it says a person with integrity has erect posture/gait, straight vision, fearless principled living… Such values make an individual strong and competent. 

One such individual was the father of our nation. His autobiography “My experiments with truth” illustrates living with integrity.  It shows that the character of an individual is built not only by the sturdy bricks provided to him/her by birth but also by the brittle ones picked up on experience.  It is mostly these brittle ones which define the “make or break” of an individual’s integrity. 

Every child is born equal but only some are able to become Mahatma.  To maintain integrity, one has to have a clear mind/thought process.  Such a quality can be obtained by training our mind.  Momentary clarities in thought have to be converted into consistent ones.  Such consistency will enable one to act without fear.  Such acts will enable our country to weed out corruption and bring improvement in all spheres of life.  The first battle against corruption is the one within. 

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