Corruption, as visioned in our ordinary circumstances, is a state of mind, imho. It originates in an eagerness to make "easy money" or "easy income". This has some unresearched (I think so) links to our Hindu world view.
In the Hindu view, this entire world is Maayaa or unreal, and reality lies elsewhere. The advaita philosophy as interpreted by the very many preachers and authors, tends to deal mostly with the philosophical nuances marginalizing the requirements of people to become eligible for such philosophical knowledge and enlightenment. There are cases of Swamis and Acharyas, who are usually held in high respect by the hoi polloi, being exposed and found to have led immoral and unprincipled lives, themselves. Thus the interface between religion and the ordinary man in the street is believed to be corrupt.
The comparative position in the other major religions is also not very different. Hence, for the man-in-the street, there is no strong religious instinct to lead an uncorrupted life. Next, he finds the ruling class, i.e., the Politicians, right from those in the bottom-most level to the highest level in the land virtually wallowing in corruption. Unlike the olden days we have the spy cameras, wikileaks and even CAG reports indicting the high and the mighty.
Corruption in the judiciary is something like Brahman, the God; Everyone probably knows and feels that it exists but no one is able to pinpoint it.
In such circumstances when the Government's consciously laid-out policies invite the western way of living and affords all support to the automobile, FMCG and related areas, the society gets under the influence of a highly consumerist phase. Each person has to keep up with his or her joneses and look to one's neighbor as a benchmark for social standing or the accumulation of material goods. Failure in this regard is perceived as demonstrating socio-economic or cultural inferiority. The impressionable youth are the most swayed by this phenomenon and the parents are driven to finding out the resources to keep up with the joneses. Since even our gurus, babas, swamijis, etc., love very much to lead a cushy life with all that modern society elsewhere can provide to them in US or Europe, the common people have no example to follow any other, more frugal and less ostentatious model to adopt.
Everyone therefore tries to make "extra" income to meet the ever-swelling consumerist demands at the personal as well as the family levels. Some have no option/avenues except doing hard work in more than one place for 14 or 15 hours total per day, but many find themselves in a position to use their discretion in the very long chain of our Government machinery providing service to the common people; they then decide to extract a certain premium for using such discretion in favour of the common man and this is the most familiar face of corruption. (Incidentally, A.Raja also did the same thing only - used his discretionary powers to favour some but the payment was a little circuitous, is it not?)
We have always had the rate of bribes informally known to anyone and everyone who has something to get done in any government office - right from the village panchayat to the GOI ministries in New Delhi, and from the Magistrate's court to the highest level probably. I feel the best course for the country will be to
"tolerate" this corruption
, just as we arehabituated to breaking coconut in front of Ganesh for success in any and every undertaking of ours.
The more we make efforts to eradicate this from our society, the more powerful it will grow and it is a vicious cycle because the bribe-taker on one spot is also bribe-giver in a dozen other spots, and if the rate at any one point increases there is a chain reaction and all other rates will also increase.
So, let us say "Jai Corruption" and go to sleep without any tension in our minds
Sorry for the very long post.
