Honestly..one doesn't know whether to laugh or cry! It is not a laughing matter.....and yet it is comical....corruption that is coming out of every nook and cranny of the Indian polity! I like Jaspal Bhatti's opinion. Comedian-actor and Nonsense Club founder Jaspal Bhatti wants a new right for the people of India - the 'Right to Scam'. Bhatti and his team enacted a play in Chandigarh's Sector 17, appealing to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to allow the 'Right to Scam' for everyone. "Right to scam shouldn't be just the prerogative of powerful ministers but should be for everybody........the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan should be abandoned and a new scheme should be launched- 'Sarva Ghotala Abhiyaan'. Every young and old should be taught to understand what a scam is and how to become a part of a scam," is Bhatti's appeal!
The latest scam is the Radia Tapes and the power brokers, even among Indian journalists, who for some reason have allowed power to corrupt them - so busy looking for the beam in others but failing to see the log in their own eyes, and justifying their actions, to boot!
Up till now the hugest one is the 2G Spectrum scam - where the union minister of telecom A. Raja sold 2G licences at throwaway prices costing the nation Rs.1.76 lakh crores - how phenomenal is that? The CWG scam is another loot, think of it - the 2006 Melbourne CWG cost Rs.5000 crore and the 2008 Beijing Olympic budget was Rs.28000 crores. But the Rs.70,000 crores spent on the CWG New Delhi has only half the amount spent on the sportspersons and the rest is yet to be accounted for!
The sadder story is the Adarsh scam where in 2003 the 31 storey Adarsh Cooperative Housing Society building came up in Colaba. Each flat which actually cost Rs.6-8.5 crore was sold at Rs.60-85 lakhs to politicians and to Army and Navy chiefs and generals. All this on land which was meant to be for the Kargil war widows.
Who can forget the Satyam scam - the biggest fraud in the corporate history to the tune of Rs. 14000 crore. Ramalingam Raju, the success story of AP, fudged account books for years inflating revenues and profit figures. When the story broke, it also shattered the integrity of Indian business in India and abroad.
The Telgi scam was incredible - Abdul Karim Telgi sold fruit and vegetables in trains to pay for his school education. But he mastered the art of forging stamp papers. In 2007 when he was sentenced, it was estimated that his forgery was up to the tune of Rs.43000 crores.
There are literally a-scam-a-year frauds to choose from - the Bofors scandal, the Fodder scam, the IPL scam, the Hawala scam, the Harshad Mehta stockmarket scandal, the Ketan Parekh fraud, the Match-fixing Cricket scams, the Cobblers scam, the Bhansali scam, the UTI scam, the Global Trust Bank scandal....the list goes on and on!
India has one of the world's leading economists as its Prime Minister and Asia's best Finance Minister. Inspite of such luminaries, the corruption juggernaut is rolling on. We can laugh about it, I suppose, but in the end one corrupt system will replace another corrupt system. The greed and evil is increasing as the days go by and so is the hardening of the conscience of our leaders in politics, in the government and in the business community - the armed forces and the journalists are not spared either.
The Bible puts the matter of corruption so simply that even a child can understand it. In the book of Proverbs it says that we should avoid the "ways of everyone that is greedy of gain" and "the way of the evil man, who speaks froward (stubbornly disobedient and contrary) things; who leaves the paths of uprightness, to walk in the ways of darkness; who rejoice to do evil, and delights in the frowardness of the wicked: whose ways are crooked...." In Proverbs 10:9 it says "He that walketh uprightly walketh surely: but he that perverteth his ways shall be known." Proverbs 17:23 says "A wicked man taketh a gift out of the bosom to pervert the ways of judgment."
Conscience is becoming so dull, the knowledge of good and evil is becoming hazy according to the world standards. Everyone has their own opinion of what is right and wrong and there is no common standard. For us, who believe in the God of the Bible, we believe that a day is coming when everyone will be called to account, and so will nations and ethnic groups and communities, no one is exempt from that time. A day of judgment is coming for those who refuse to believe that Jesus Christ came in the flesh and was judged on our behalf taking the punishment due to us. It will surely be a harsh judgement. If God could judge His Son Jesus Christ so harshly, why should He not judge those who refuse the free gift of eternal life and forgiveness of sins? It is better to live daily in the fear of the Lord because that is true wisdom. It is my prayer for India that corruption will be rooted out and the true peace that comes from accepting Jesus Christ as Saviour will come to our nation.
