Season of Protests

I have been feeling slightly down cast these days.  A sense of uneasiness or perhaps an inferiority complex as any Behavioral Therapist would easily point to. Before you jump into further conclusions let me tell you it’s all about my inability (again a contrarian?)  to see eye to eye with many of my friends…..on raging current issues, be it India Against Corruption, Food Security, Money stashed abroad or the Wikileaks. And why I write this now is because I have not been a great supporter of Anna Hazare’s movement. And this precisely is the cause of minor quarrels at home. For, I have not participated in a sit-in or lit a candle. Neither have I joined the Facebook group to support the anti corruption drive.  My wife feels I have missed the bus and when the movement comes to power I would be one in the firing line, hopefully a little away from the point blank range. Some consolation.

It is not that I’m not against corruption. But it is the definition of corruption that bothers me.  From petty corruption to massive swindling. Sleaze, bribery, fraud, petty theft. The list is endless. Would I fall into any of these categories?  Or would some misdeeds be excluded from the purview   so that there will be still some left in the movement? I wouldn’t worry too much as the core group will burn the midnight oil over these minor issues. They will, for sure, come out with some innovative ways of ‘eradicating’ corruption. And not just newer and stiffer punishments which we all know are not effective deterrents. I would keep my fingers crossed.

I never thought corruption is such a high brow subject with many nuances , has class conflict characteristics and philosophical undertones until I came across ,in the internet,  a paper titled ‘The Social Construction of Corruption’ by Prof  Mark Granovetter of the Stanford University. I won’t burden my very few readers with the gravitas of the paper, save quote: “yet it is common in human history that groups with conflicting interests present different sets of standards for what behavior is appropriate, and label behavior that benefits competing groups as illegitimate or more specifically “corrupt”.”

Again it was around the same time that I came across a very novel idea mooted by none other than Dr Kaushik Basu, Chief Economic Advisor, Ministry of Finance.  I found this absolutely radical and out of the box.  Make bribe giving legal! Don’t knit your eyebrows too soon… Not all kinds of bribery, but the petty ones; what the Dr. terms as ‘harassment bribery’.  A kind of speed money you have to part with to get a certificate, a tax refund or a bank loan. By making ‘payment of such bribes legal, the giver gets immunity while the taker does not’. Dr Basu avers this divergence of positions could be a deterrent to the bribe taker. The immunity is not to be retrospective and the details yet to be worked out. Make no mistake, this loud thinking by the learned Dr. has already met with stiff opposition from the moral brigade.  I’m, however, an enthusiast and would like to give this a try.

If I were to confess retrospectively on my misdemeanors I would have a few cases to report. These are not bribe taking instances and some are not related to bribery at all.  And pray what are my misdeeds? Obtention of a railway berth through a tout, an unauthorized electric connection, an out of turn gas cylinder and may be a few more similar ones if I rack my brain really hard.  When the matter of my not joining the sit-in was discussed I confessed to my wife I could not be considered blemishless and as such it would be hypocracy if I shouted “Bhrashtachar Murdabad”. Her response: “Only Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion and not Caesar”

Her latest take on the subject is that since I missed the Anna bus I should atleast jump on to the Baba wagon.  Something unthinkable for me.  But I had to do something to buy peace. It was around this time that the “Bodies of the Soil (copy right: my friend Kozhipurath Rajagopal) issue cropped up…. Ivor Madom crematorium won’t take bodies from outside the Panchayat any more. A body blow to many of us who had mentally reserved a nook for our heavenly journey!  Taking up the cause the local Citizens group decided to go in for a ‘Dharna’ demanding construction of a decent crematorium in my home town

Not to miss the God sent opportunity and more so to buy peace than to heed the still, small inner voice, I joined the sit-in in front of the Municipal office. None could fault me for this and there is truce at home. For the time being!