January 6, 2025

In the twentieth century, corruption was associated with people in position, power and those who wielded unconstitutional and unrecognisable ability to use power that cannot easily be identified. However, more than two decades into the twenty-first century, it has become a way of life even for the common people whose powers may not be constitutionally guaranteed or widely recognised or even easily identified.

Transparency International published, some time ago, details about corruption rampant in international contracts of multi-national companies. Their ‘Oversight Committee for Fraud and Corruption’ established a policy called ‘Anti-Corruption Strategy’. Its objective was not only to fight corruption in the execution of contracts of projects supported by the World Bank but also help governments and international organisations which have been fighting against corruption.

The word ‘value’ has normally the common meaning of deciding the worth of anything as per perceivable or defined standards. However, the most important meaning of the word ‘value’ is that it refers to a belief system which has certain amount of importance in the life of a person or a community or a country to be held as a beacon of guidance for even everyday activities. There are universal values common to all people and specific values which are natural to a particular community or even a nation. Freedom, equality, right to life and respect for laws and rules are universal values that are accepted by almost all nations. However, what matters more are the values which are practised by common people that become a part of the culture of the people in their everyday relationships. Such value practices become a base for people to relate to each other and when they are not practiced, relationships break down between individuals and among those in communities.

Simple values are modelled to the young, and shaped by the influence of parents at home and later by teachers at schools and subsequently by the common people in their common behaviour in public places. A parent instructs the child not to keep open the tap of the wash basin continuously while brushing teeth to influence the child on three possible values. One is not to waste water which is a valuable commodity. They also influence a child to understand that any waste of water is unfair to those people who have scarcity of water. In addition, they bring to the notice of the child that parents will have to pay more money for getting water which the child need not use for brushing and washing. So, the instructions from the parents reach the child with certain amount of not only rationality but also logicality. In fact, parents are using their leader effectiveness to influence the child to accept the value of preserving water. Naturally enough, this will also move on to a larger belief system of protection and preservation of Nature itself.

At school, in a classroom, when the teacher allows all students to speak freely with her or with each other, she models the value of freedom which she may curtail when she wants to instruct a particular item in a syllabi. She demands silence and attention. She is teaching the children the basic rights of the individual’s freedom to communicate and also the collective need for following certain rules and regulations for such collective living. Thus, the value of freedom, self-respect, respect to others and acceptance of regulations are brought to the notice of the child by an effective teacher without much efforts.

When a person wants to travel, she stands in a queue to purchase a ticket. While boarding the bus, she adheres to her turn. While getting seated, one occupies the seat which is available and sometimes accommodates another by moving and adjusting the space available in the seat. Just as a person accepts the right of the others to get tickets while standing in the queue, one behind the other, the person also learns that it is possible to accommodate another by going through a little difficulty in being seated for some time. A person gets down at the particular place up to which to travel for which she or he has paid for through a ticket. All these are systems of functioning or performing which are unwritten rules for common human functioning. Thus, the society teaches each other to not only accept the needs of others but also to tolerate if or when certain inconveniences are suffered by any. Likewise, just as parents and teachers influence, members of the society or community also influence each other to accept certain values as ways of everyday living.

However, these simple value practices do get broken down from time to time. This can happen because of the conflicting needs of people in various situations like one child wants to enjoy listening to the running water from the tap whereas another wants to exert more work by closing and opening the tap again and again; or a child wants to speak at a time when the teacher expects silence or when some other child is offering the answer and thus breaking the system that was to be followed; or a passenger insists on smoking while being seated without considering the normal practice of following the ban on smoking in the bus, or any of such behaviour resulting in breaking of a value that is practiced.

At much wider and more powerful areas of human living value practices do have a profoundly greater impact. Wars are waged on the pretext of protection of freedom. However, one refuses to forget that the freedom of ordinary people to live is annihilated by war mongers. Therefore, one can easily see the value conflict between and among nations. While one declares at the top of one’s voice, the need to protect freedom to live, the other suffers from the loss of freedom to live. In any area of conflict, bigger or smaller, by the affluent or the poor, by individuals or collectives, by communities or congregations, fighting for the freedom of one group may automatically lead to the refusal of freedom for the opposite.

Corruption in itself is a value, an unacceptable belief system indeed in any society, of believing in breaking away from the common and justifiable value practices acceptable to individuals, societies and communities. Most people do not want to consider corruption as a value. All the same, it has to be understood that corruption is also a belief system, some system in which some people believe that at some time they are practiceable because they are profitable or useful to the performer. She or he continues to believe in that and hence it is their value.

Indeed, it is disheartening to note that the corrupt practices has come down to the common human these days and, again, the other common humans around are pitiably forced to tolerate the corrupt practices.

Let us have a couple of examples.

A two way electric switch in my bedroom stopped working and naturally I called an electrician who promptly opened the box and found that something was wrong with the switch and reported it to me. The solution was to replace it, according to him. I gave him money to buy the switches and also asked him to replace them. He did it in a short while. I paid him for both, the cost of the switches and the service he rendered. As he was getting ready to go, involuntarily, rather intuitively, I asked for the old switches. There was a doubt on his face, all the same, he produced both from a small box that he carried with him. I discovered that they were the new ones. He had repaired the old ones and fixed them and the switches were working. The money had changed hands and I did not want to quarrel with him. However, I advised him not to repeat that again in another house. He went away though with a bent head for trying to execute a corrupt practice.

This narration comes from a friend of mine. During the month of May this year, there was water shortage in his apartment complex and the society of the flat owners decided to buy one tanker load of water everyday though they knew that municipal water would come once in a way. One day, this gentleman was near the tank where the water was being pumped in. For the fun of it he looked into the tank through the opening of the chamber and noticed that no water was falling from the pipe while the motor fitted on the tanker was on. He waited for some time and noticed that for the pumping time of twenty-five minutes the pump went on without a drop of water falling. The contractor was taking rupees one thousand eight hundred for every trip that he made to fill water in which he did not fill any water at all.

Corruption has come down to the common man as a form of practice and mostly they are tolerated. No one, normally, go to police with a complaint or take the corrupt person to a court of law.

Sometimes, people can go through a value conflict. There may be two values which may have to be practiced which are contradictory to each other and a person may go through a terrible conflict to choose one of the two.

One of our students, he was the President of the Students’ Union of the previous year, died at the Maravanthe beach when he went for a swim. A senior friend who was a professor elsewhere was also with him and he could not save the young man from getting drowned in the violence of the waves. After being informed about his death, I drove down to Maravanthe and did everything possible to recover the body. Though it was late afternoon, the fishermen in the area were very helpful in locating the body which came up in the waves and they dared to go to the sea and bring the young man’s body from the waves, after which a postmortem had to be done. One Mr Bava who was the inspector of the Kundapur police station, a former student of mine, was very helpful in doing the legal formalities and contacted the doctor from the nearby hospital to do the postmortem. Just before the postmortem was to begin, the doctor pulled me by the sleeve and told me that he had to be given an amount to do the postmortem, otherwise he would state that it was going to be dark, and hence, he could not conduct the postmortem. I knew that if the postmortem was not done immediately, the stomach of the dead body which contained a lot of water might break in the swelling process or by the next day it would decay and it would have been impossible to take his body to his mother.

I had never paid anybody bribe and I had spoken against corrupt practices in my classes and had always appealed to students not only to avoid corrupt practices but also to fight against them. Now, I was confronted with the conflict of not paying as I opposed bribery always and allow the body to decay; or, pay and get the postmortem done and take the body to his mother in a better shape.

I agreed to the doctor that I would pay. The postmortem was done. I had already arranged an ambulance and the body was placed in. I was confronted by another conflict, pay because it was a promise made or avoid paying as it was a bribe. I got into my car and drove away to Mangalore. I did not pay the doctor whom I had promised, undeniably I always believed one should do what one promises to anybody else.

I had a justification to myself because I was confronted by the possible practice of two values. On one side, practice a corrupt method to achieve my goal, on the other side fail to do so and make student’s mother and relatives suffer more. In the conflict of these two values, I told myself, the best was to choose the lesser evil. When I discuss this as an example with professors, teachers and students, I tell them that in the two values that I had practiced, I chose the lesser evil because breaking my promise to pay the doctor was a lesser evil because the promise was taken from me under duress, and therefore, it was not a true promise at all. So, breaking a promise is a lesser evil than paying a bribe, as far as this case was concerned.

The examples above have been quoted to show how corruption has become a common way of life and how one has to stand against it even when one is confronted by two possible value practices which are opposed to each other. The only way is to practice the lesser evil. This in no way means that any value should be compromised. Unless people become not only intelligent enough to understand the systems of corrupt practices but also become willing to stand against them, there is no way corrupt value practices can be reduced, if not eliminated. There is a need for building a collective consciousness against corruption in every field of human activities and relationships.