Corruption has been an issue which has been increasingly affecting our country(India) for the last half a century. It has currently assumed proportions threatening to tear the very fabric of our society apart, hence the need to respond in an urgent and coordinated manner by every citizen of our country. When we talk of corruption we mean immorality, dishonesty, lack of integrity etc. and pictures of corrupt government officials and public representatives come to our mind. These officials and public representatives of our Government form the ruling class and are none other than the guardians of our country. What we are concerned about is then corruption in our guardians.
If we try to find the location of this entity called corruption we have to zero in on one guardian and try to find it there. This thing called corruption is obviously located in the mind of our guardian. In order to understand the nature of this entity let us compare a corrupt mind with its opposite i.e. an ideal mind. This opposite as we see cant be anything other than a virtuous mind. Corruption as we understand is lack of integrity, justice etc. and therefore what we are talking here is the lack of something called virtue in the guardian. By virtue we mean morality, compassion, integrity and the like.
If every citizen is desirous of this entity called virtue in our guardian let us examine why it doesn’t exist in him. Our guardians are a representative sample of our society and assigned that role through a process of selection (in case of officials) or election (in case of public representatives). As every citizen recognizes and understands the evils of corruption we can safely assume that our citizens know how virtue looks like. Our citizens i)know what virtue is, ii)want this thing called virtue in our guardian, and iii) know that it doesn’t exist currently in his mind. Therefore the missing link here appears to be a lack of effort to inject this virtue thing into our guardian’s mind.
Is this something which can be put into a human mind and if so at what age should it be done? Everyone knows that we learn virtue from our parents/teachers and that virtue is something which can be taught. That which can be taught is said to be knowledge; and knowledge can be given right from childhood to old age. Let us divide the life of our guardian into two parts one during childhood where he can be taught by his parents/teachers, second after assuming the role of a guardian where he can be taught by the State.
If we examine how far the teaching of virtue is happening in the current day homes by parents we find it happening at very few homes. Part of our society has transformed from version 1.0 where everyone was living and working to satisfy the true human needs, to version 2.0 where the desires for luxury took the place of basic needs. However this transformation hasn’t taken place for the whole of the population of our country. There still remains a very big but so called outdated and underdeveloped version 1.0 of the society. These two versions coexist currently each unaware of the existence of the other. The version 1.0 continues to exist in the vast lands of our rural areas and version 2.0 has taken birth and is growing rapidly in the towns and cities. It is highly unlikely to find our virtue thing in version 2.0, therefore it can be found only in the version 1.0. The version 1.0 itself has started to melt and before it vanishes we need to find our virtue thing and preserve it for replication and future use.
Coming back to our guardian chap, after stepping into that role he gets a taste of version 2.0. Since it appears to give a lot of pleasure to his senses he starts aspiring to become a successful member of version 2.0 getting rid of whatever little virtue thing he has in him.
Therefore the origin of this entity called corruption is nothing but absence of a thing called virtue in our guardian. This again has its origin in two things, one failure of parents/teachers in educating their kids in virtue and the other in the failure of the State in imparting virtue to its guardians and valuing it.
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