Why corruption become part of life? It is spread to private organizations also. Do we accept the status, "one of the most corrupt countries in the world" as an honour?

Corruption in government Departments

The first corrupt person I met was a village officer who asked Rs. 150 as bribe to issue an income certificate for a fee concession of Rs. 180/- in a year. At that time my age was 15 and sometimes I used to walk 15 Kilometers to my college, as Students Ticket amount of 25 paisa was not available with me. My studies were without the support of my family. The bribe of Rs. 150 was a very big amount for me and the village officer hanged my education for few weeks. The theory of bribe was not understandable to me and that village officer may also have children. If his children are forced to discontinue the education, what would be his feeling?

Later I came to Delhi and understand that that village officer is a child in taking bribe and Delhi's government officers have more advanced technology in taking bribe The most shocking experience was when I went to the office of an SDM to get some documents attested. He was discussing about his bribe case trial in a court in the next day and was simply working as Sub-Divisional Magistrate a day before his trial.

Another shocking incident was when I went to a Tribunal Court to file an Income Tax Appeal. It was the duty of the clerk to receive the appeal. After receiving the appeal he gave the acknowledgement to me and instructed to get it stamped from the peon. When I approached the peon, the bribe he asked was more than the appeal fee. I told him that your superintendent is from our state and I will complain to him. The reply of the peon was "My sir also knows that we take money, it is with his permission".

These kinds of incidents created negative feeling about government departments and I hate to visit government offices. I considered people accepting bribe as the "dog with fleas".

But one thing we must accept. The people who take bribe will do the work "honestly" after getting their bribe amount.

Corruption in Private Organizations

I have worked for 21 years in private organizations. I started my career by living in a rented house and now also I am living in a rented house even though my average salary was not less than my colleagues who are known as most honest and who owns 2 or more property in Delhi. One person whose salary was 1/6th of my salary and without any other income source in his family owns few properties in Delhi. In my experience it is very difficult to earn to purchase a house with private employment income.

In my service I met plenty of employees who act as very honest and obedient to the organization, but their aim was only to earn money. Maximum number of advises I received during my employment was to earn money anyway and some of them was from unexpected people.

In private organizations people make their political group and expel the employees who do not cooperate with them by making traps. They will do everything to catch the attention of management, express their honest and loyalty. Since they are working in groups, the management will not be willing to hear the explanations of odd employees and the decisions will be twisted by the group heads.

But there are few organizations following good business ethics and these kinds of planning will not be successful there.

Bribe in Private Organizations

This story is related to our family owned data processing company. Our company applied for data processing work from a US based company with branch in India. The Indian Branch was headed and managed by Indian Staff. They gave us sample data for typing and coding. We did the work with the help of experienced staff. Our first application was rejected in the name of quality deficiency. We tried again and this time they did not find any mistake to reject our proposal.

We got allotted the first project and successfully completed it in time. Due to the quality maintenance and punctuality we got more works and gradually our organization grown as the biggest vendor of that Company.

While working with them, we noticed that a group of supervisors and managers were always trying to pressurize us even though we were delivering the work in time. They used to call us at 2.00 am or 3.00 am in the morning to status of work completion; they tried to find mistakes in our projects and many times find it as false allegations.

Our team had a doubt on the working of some of the employees in that company and when we enquired about it we realized that actually there was a very big group of employees who are taking bribe from the vendors in that company. Those who are not paying bribe were harassed and threatened.

After few months they stopped giving work to our organization by alleging mistake in a line typed by our employees. At that time there were many employees in the organization and it was a dangerous situation for all of them.

When we tried to find out the actual reason, the manager and his team frankly said that you will have to pay us bribe on monthly basis and there is a custom of giving liquor party to our team twice or thrice in a month.

We have decided to stop the work as we were not ready to get work by bribing the employees of that company. This resulted loss of employment to the staff and financial loss the company.

Later negative growth started in that US based company and their business volume is less than earlier.

Now bribing is the only option to get work contracts in some private companies.

Earlier we used to say that "an honest man is the noblest work of god"; now society changed the definition "an honest man is the mistake of god"