Ayush

What is corruption ? How does it work ? Who does it involve ? If you come across a broken public toilet seat or a dirty public toilet or a broken footpath or a pot holed road or uncollected garbage. You blame it on corruption. Yes you are correct but only partially. Let’s examine this phenomena. The contract for cleaning public toilets along with the contractor is for cleaning the toilet twice a day. That’s the service level agreement. The contractor employs only a third of what he’s supposed to employ. Out of this third a third are political appointees. Yes it’s that deep rooted. (The Fortuner or Jaguar wheels that you see your local councillor or MLA or MP riding around in is made of this sort of looted money). A third is what he pays back the sanitary inspectors and various staff that work under the aegis of the government or PMC. A third or what is left over is actually what he gets to do the job in. He wants to maximise his income too. Therefore he does what his duty is only in case it’s called out or pointed out to him. Since nobody in India complains… “why should I take it as my bad”. It’s always someone else’s responsibility to complain or to get things moving. But of course, nothing gets done. Public toilets are always in a state of disarray and also the garbage on the streets as also the broken down roads and footpaths as also “put your favourite civic issue here” Now extrapolate this to everything that’s broken, needs repair or never got built properly in the first place. This is what is going on. This is what is being done. This is what is being accepted by all of us. As long as there is acceptance amongst us for these substandard quality of service and practises : As long as there is protection for the bureaucracy under section 311 : As long as the judiciary never takes any decisive action : As long as there is or will be discussions with regard to how to keep the same system going or bettering it : As long as none of us learns to be responsible for our communities : It’s a long list, Corruption will persist. One can say instead of bartan bajao. A certain political leader could ask people to be more forthright and work towards community engagement. But what if; keeping this corrupt system alive pays off much much more that dismantling it root from branch. That’s why despite several open challenges a corrupt PMC Commisioner who is sitting at the helm of affairs of a corrupt municipality will not come out in the open and debate us on any civic issue never mind just the rivers, roads, garbage or hills, gardens, lakes and the traffic state of affairs. It’s a case of the corrupt leading the corrupt, protecting the corrupt and defending the corrupt. Now do you know ? A part of the fault is also ours because we tolerate and accept this corruption. It’s time for all of us to understand this phenomena properly. If you do, pick up the phone and begin demanding what is rightfully ours. Use social media and whatever channels you have to keep exposing the corruption. Keep at registering complaints continuously. Keep at it. Relentlessly. Clean up the River Clean up the streets Give us world class roads Give us 24X7 water Clean Air. Pure water & Zero Garbage is our birthright and we shall have it.