Mar 17, 2001 12:29 PM
1751 Views
Corruption is a way of life here!
So much of brouhaha over the Tehelka tapes! As if some divine gospel or a great secret of life has been revealed! The rampant corruption in all walks of life, especially in the Government Ministries,Deptts,Corporations,Authorities, & PSUs is so widespread and well known to each and every citizen. A few journalists, analysts,commentators and armchair critics making a big issue out of tehelka tapes is laughable indeed.
In our day today life;
Traffic cops harass you, take away your vehicle,stop you,….you have to pay.
You want your telephone shifted,transferred,repaired,re-connected, or new connection,…you have to pay.
You want a DDA/BDA site allotted..you pay;you want building plans approved..you pay;you want site to be registered..you pay;you want electricity or water connection, or enhanced load..you pay.
You want a bed in Govt. hospital like Willingdon or AIIMS, you pay; someone dear has died in an accident and the body has been taken for post-mortem, you want to bring back the body..you pay.
Your phone bill is inflated, electricity bill is wrong, you want corrections…you pay.
Someone has rammed your vehicle, you want to claim insurance and want an FIR, you pay the cops and pay the insurance surveyor too.
Whether you need a passport, driving licence,ration card,domicile certificate,marriage certificate,birth certificate,death certificate, or anything…you pay.
You want IT asessment done,want refund order,want ITCC-certificate, you pay.
Earlier days we had to pay for gas connections and scooter allotments too.
For anything and everthing you have to pay. These payments are not even recognised as bribes, these are service charges!
IN business life;
One has to make regular monthly payments to Excise,SalesTax, ESI, PF Inspectors,Factory inspector, pollution control board chap, local electricity board chaps,Shops&Establishment act inspectors. These are regular service charges, if they discover or invent some irregularities, however flimsy and trivial, you have to pay again!
In the era of controlled prices and controlled distribution, one had to pay for obtaining quotas/allotment letters for steel,cement,LPG,kerosen,furnace oil, diesel,coal etc.
You want to sell something? Government is the biggest buyer of everything from Pins to Pipes, Lighting goods, cables, distribution and transmission equipment,electricity meters, poles, rails, constrction material, TV sets, Computers, …anything and everything. If you want to get a supply order or works contract, you have to pay your way through all the levels. Once you get the order, you have to pay for inspection and acceptance, Once that is done, you have to pay to get the bills passed, and payment released. You have to pay at every level and every stage. It’s such an organised racket that percentages are fixed and well known, they might as well issue a printed price list!
All the citizens,businessmen,industrialists,shopkeepers,contractors, everyone knows it and have experienced it…what’s so new? If some people today claim that they never knew the sheer scale of it, I can only pity their ignorance!
If all these payments are put together, the NETA_BABU_ THULLA (inspector raj) nexus costs the country more than Rs.300,000 Crores. This is in addition to the Rs.75000 Crore Salary Bill! Do you think these guys live on their salaries!
This is not to say that everyone is corrupt, maybe everyone hasn’t had an opportunity!maybe some of them are good!
Tehelka has managed to get it all on tape and put it on website out in the open for everyone. The things which nobody wanted to acknowledge the existence of, are now in the open.
Good job Tehelka, don’t just stop at Defence deals, if you investigate, you will find that whether it is a deal for cables, or electric meters, pump sets or garbage bins, the story is same everywhere right from local Muncipality to Central Government Ministries.
How long are we going to put up and shut-up?
