“CORRUPTION” – Why? How to overcome?

(A Vedic paradigm to fix the “root-cause”)

BACE Vedic Forum

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Generally, people need incentives to work. Most of us perform actions with some goal in mind. We want to achieve the end result in the best manner and thereafter claim the fruits of our effort. Better are the people who perform their actions and work without any vested interests and personal gain, i.e. those who consider work their duty and responsibility. They follow the principle of ‘sarva jan hitaya, sarva jan sukhaya’. But, unfortunately there also exist a special, smart and intelligent class of men who want to achieve everything without putting in proper effort. These people claim the fruits without working and this is indeed corruption. Corruption is a welfare loss in general. Economically, it leads to leakages and conspicuous consumption which is very problematic to the social strength of any economy because it marginalises the poor. The burden of this corruption falls straight on the poor. At the personal level, it degrades the consciousness. There develops a tendency to further cheat or bribe as we are lured to follow this short-cut method to achieve our goal.

Especially in our country, corruption has translated itself to unprecedented levels so much so that the whole country is unanimously fighting to root this out. Corruption is the fallout of the development process. With the development, structures, institutions and systems expand. This leads to de-centralisation of power and opportunities for the intermediaries to manipulate in between. Historically, any system or government tried hard to do away with corruption through a framework of rules and regulations but did not succeed. The prime cause of this had been faulty implementation of plans and secondly, avenues for the corrupt persons to escape again through illegal means (bribing the judiciary). Corruption has now become an integral part of the system. Any external force no matter how strong is not sufficient enough to break the system until there are endogenous forces integral to the system that work against its stability. Thus, the focus of any effort to stabilise any system should not be mitigating the external forces but resolving the opposite forces in the system. However, we can clearly assert that government focused on external forces by imposing rules and regulations.

To solve, we must know the problem. Today, the problem is not corruption. It is simply a form which has manifested itself externally. The real problem is the tendency to ‘cheat’. Our body is made up of matter which is limited and temporary. Thus, we can sense everything only in some range. Due to this, our senses are often illusioned. This illusion makes us commit mistakes and to cover up our faults, we resort to lies and in the process deceive others. These are also the four fundamental defects of living entities. But, this does not mean that we are bound to live in such a system. The solution to this has been given by many personalities like Chanakya, but the perfect insight is found in Bhagvad Gita. It says that because we perceive ourselves to be bodies, we hanker after bodily pleasure arising out of the contact of senses with sense objects. This creates an attachment for the sense objects that makes us very passionate to work and the same time very possessive in nature. In the process, if we succeed in achieving the desired sense objects, we further become attached and if by chance we fail, then it makes us angry (B.G. 2.62-63). Both these acts make us lusty and greedy by taking away our intelligence. This further entangles us in bodily pleasure.

Human life is simply not meant to run after sensory or carnal pleasure like a mad elephant. Animals have low consciousness and cannot understand the purpose of life. Animal life is definitely unregulated because they have no notion of morality and social welfare. But, human life means regulated life based on the principles of austerity, cleanliness, mercy and truthfulness. If we analytically see animals do not possess any of these virtues. Following these principles intrinsically implies condemning those activities that degrade them. Intoxication, illicit sex, meat eating, and gambling are four activities that completely destroy these injunctions; commonly found in animals. Unfortunately, instead of demolishing them, the present government is promoting them on a massive scale because they are high profit-low investment ventures. This has in turn increased conspicuous consumption. Government has now legalised production and marketing of wines, prostitution, slaughterhouses, casinos and short term speculative activities. The tendency to enjoy has escalated exponentially but the incomes have not gone up in general. People are therefore compelled to resort to usurious and illegal means of earning money to satisfy their urge of consumption. All this is happening due to lack of spiritual insight. However, these principles are part of any religion as they are part of the human society because without them humans are no better than animals.

The biggest folly of the government and the anti-corruption practices are that they want to achieve the result without focusing on the real problem. On one hand, we are promoting conspicuous consumption by increasing their production while on the other trying to achieve a corrupt-free nation. There is an integral contradiction in the formulation of such a system. Such practices can go on forever but will definitely fail to eradicate corruption unless these four principles are strictly established in the social and economic system through the intervention of the political systems.