It Takes Two to Tango

When I was young I got into a lot of fights with my brother and being the “mama’s boy,” I ran and complained to my mother about what a bully my brother was and how he beat me without any fault of mine. My mother the most bi-partisan of mothers that she is, scolded my brother and then with wisdom filled eyes always said to me “son it takes two hands to clap”.

We can often hear young men and women, in restaurants, in classrooms or tea stalls in every nook and corner complain about the corrupt policemen down the corner, or the corrupt politicians who cut the ribbon the other day, or the corrupt officer they saw in the office. But what and who makes them corrupt is a subject best left unsaid. We never dare to venture into territory that requires in-depth analyses of the problem. In our rash judgment, we fail to see the root of the problem; we fail to ask whether we hate the sin or the sinner. We need ask this simple, mostly muted question, do we hate politician and the corrupt or do we hate corruption.

If the answer suggests we must hate the action-doer rather than the action, then we are in a dilemma. We must then know who the corrupt is. Obviously the usual victims, public servants and politicians and other men in power, but if it takes two hands to claps then we find that we are the other hand and must curse and insult ourselves. We cannot forever live in this utopia of acting innocent for the mistakes we have done. It is hypocritical to say something and do the other; we cannot hate the traffic police for being corrupt while slip him that
Rs. 50 note when he/she catches you. You cannot complain about the corrupt system of our public service while you request your father to ask his friend who is working in that department to get your job done first. How can anyone complain about nepotism in the system, when and if given the chance we would do the same thing? We too cannot complain about nothing being done, while we too are dumb by-standers. If it’s the corrupt we hate then we must hate ourselves for leading the nation where it is today. Yapping judgment is one thing, but analyzing is quite another. We have had enough debate over where the problem is, and what the problem is, but hardly any over how to solve the problem.

While on the other hand if you reckon that we should hate corruption. Then we need to stop passing judgment, cause we have a lot of work in front of us. If we agree to hate corruption then lets all work together, including the politicians and the officers, to find why corruption exists and what would limit it. There needs to be more research conducted on why the politicians and public servants need that extra cash. We then have to review the salary and pay system of our system. We have to focus on educating people of the rudimentary of civic sense and duty. We must provide for public accounting in all walks of our government. We need to strengthen our judicial system to review and pass prompt action. We have to get the masses to be aware of why what they are doing is wrong and how it will personally harm them. We need to have the media more involved. We need teachers to teach civic duty and rights, and parents to enforce them. And we must have the educated citizens direct out country. All in all we need a major change in the system we now know.

This leaves us with another question—how do we make these changes? Important ways of making these chances are education, accountability to government and non-governmental organizations, open-book records of accounts, and media involvement. These basic steps are feasible and need to be implemented.

The most important and safe way away from corruption is for people to do their part. People need not do something extra; people just need to do what they are supposed to do. If we don’t have a solution then we need to stop making the problems worse. The system is made of the people, thus to change the system, we as people need to change.