The four forces guiding the life of a public servant reason(wisdom), honour, wealth and unnecessary pleasures, depending on their magnitude make each servant unique. In their relative value, wisdom which is invaluable ranks first, followed by honour, wealth and lastly comes force of unnecessary pleasures of zero value; force of wisdom is inversely proportional to the forces of wealth and unnecessary pleasures. When I talk of wisdom, it is the rational principle of mind I refer to here, which is the one and only guiding force which converts an animal like human led by brute desires into a virtuous being led by reason. Outstanding academic excellence of an individual has nothing to contribute in this area of widom unless guided by a superior force of a rational mind illuminated by good. The good news is this logic of virtue can be learnt and the bad news is that very few people understand that it can be learnt.
Wisdom in an individual is determined by two factors, one by quality of upbringing by parents/teachers and the other by the true education received by him. Availability of virtuous persons around the individual during his childhood in the form of parents or teachers or friends is not a sufficient condition but only a necessary condition for inculcation of virtue in the him. Unless the responsibility of nurture and imparting of this wisdom during childhood had been taken up by some virtuous person, it is unlikely that our public servant would turn out to be virtuous, with the exception of those possessing divine inspiration. Blessed are those who during childhood are groomed by virtuous parents/guardians in their environment. Human minds are driven by two types of principles, an inferior one based on opinion and the other superior based on intellect; and those persons who are guided by their intellect are more likely to see reason in a virtuous life. The education at school taught in the right manner and in true spirit, would push the mind into the stewardship of intellect from that of reason. There is a notion that intelligent is the child who is quick at learning mathematics, but learning of mathematics is alone not sufficient to acquire virtue; mathematical training makes the mind rational, which inturn helps the child understand the infallable logic behind learning of virtue, provided a sincere effort is made in that direction, till he retires from this world. The types of parents that exist in our society today and the likely value that their children are going to attain, after they grow up is a topic for another write-up.
Honour is something that answers to the spirit in us, the passionate part of the person, and is ignited either by envy and ambition, or violence and contention, or anger and discontentment. Though inferior to the force of wisdom, honour is something we learn right from our childhood in the form of persons spending a fortune to get elected as a Sarpanch or an MLA, determination to win a game, passion to top an exam, determination to achieve something we lack, resolution to prove our standpoint in life. A desire to get recognition for the excellence, of whatever nature that exists in us, is the driving force here. The person derives satisfaction and pleasure out of this honour he receives.
Money is the third factor which pleases any person and public servant is no exception. It is extremely difficult to escape the temptations of the make-believe world it conjures up around us, and any escape from falling in this ignominious bottomless pit is made possible only by the understanding of logic of virtue. However a certain amount confined to legitimate and reasonable necessities is mandatory and just. Anything beyond that which the public servant justly deserves not only destroys his family fabric, but also that of the society in which he rules.
Unnecessary pleasures are those whose satisfaction is either injurious to the self or is of no use for life. A question arises as to why then are so many public servants, servants of unnecessary pleasures such as women, wine, eating, luxury etc. Once the mind is led astray by these pleasures, they hold sway over it, wisdom acquired earlier unless learnt truly, ruthlessly crushed, and the mind taken possession by these seductive elements. There is no place for virtue or wisdom where unnecessary pleasures exist. For those who might be wondering about the inferiority of unnecessary pleasures when compared to virtue, it is to say that the hypothesis that a 'life of pleasure' is superior to that of a 'life of wisdom' had been proven to be wrong by many logicians since time immemorial (most of the proofs can be found on the web).
There is a popular saying in officialdom that there are three stages in the life of a public servant, the first 10 years when he is 'garam'(hot), the next 10 years when he is 'naram'(lukewarm) and the last years of his career when he is 'besharam'(shameless). Though appearing to be a simple observation, a lot of meaning can be read into this. Freshly out of the college, unmarried, full of passion to abide by principles, the first 1/3rd of his career will be spent with a lot of enthusiasm. Once he acquires a family and realises that the principles he adheres which are in contradiction to the external reality, are resulting in frequent expulsions from jobs, making him appear redundant in the system, lowering his prestige in the eyes of his family and friends, the public servant starts getting doubts about the guiding principles in his life. The next 1/3rd of his career is spent in this confusion, neither fully principled nor totally away from principles. Finally, the realisation that he has numerous responsibilities to perform before he retires, things such as marriages of daughters, education of kids, pressure to keep up with the expensive lifestyle in the society make him bite the bullet; he throws whatever remnants of reason he has to the wind and turns himself into a corrupt absolute.
An attempt is made to plot these four forces on radar chart to arrive at the difference in the same employees at three different stages of his career. 100 units of guiding force, shared by reason, honour, wealth and pleasure, is assumed to direct an individual at any time of his life. Proportions of 30%,50%,10%,10%(reason:honour:wealth:pleasure) for early career, (20%,30%,30%,20%) for mid-career, (20%,10%,40%,30%) for late-career are taken. Perception is the sole basis for arriving at the numbers.
There exist two fundamental remedies to this ever increasing defect in a public servant's character, with time. The first is the teaching-learning of the wisdom and the other regulation of his injustice by operation of law. The aforementioned sketch gives an impression that there is no escape from such a path. However such is the fate of those persons, either in case of those whose understanding of virtue is superficial and incomplete at the earlier stages of life, or who have not made an effort at later stages of life to rekindle the dying fire of reason in their minds. Unless the state focuses on rectifying this defect of knowledge among its recruitees, the anti-corruption machinery will have a lot of work to do in brushing all the dirt underneath the carpet. Strong and intense training in the logic of virtue for all the public servants before entry into job is one of the foremost prerequisites for a strong, solid and virtuous officialdom. The second remedy of enforcement by law is inferior but is necessitated by reality; the more the enforcement of law is resorted to, in order to contain its own public servants, the worse is the quality of such a State.
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