Corruption in India!

Corruption not only has become a pervasive aspect of Indian politics but also has become an increasingly important factor in Indian elections.

The extensive role of the Indian state in providing services and promoting economic development has always created the opportunity for using public resources for private benefit.

As government regulation of business was extended in the 1960s and corporate donations were banned in 1969, trading economic favours for under-the-table contributions to political parties became an increasingly widespread political practice. During the 1980s and 1990s, corruption became associated with the occupants of the highest echelons of India’s political system.

Rajiv Gandhi’s government was rocked by scandals, as was the government of P.V. Narasimha Rao. Politicians have become so closely identified with corruption in the public eye that a Times of India poll of 1,554 adults in six metropolitan cities found that 98 percent of the public is convinced that politicians and ministers are corrupt, with 85 percent observing that corruption is on the increase.

The prominence of political corruption in India in the 1990s is hardly unique to India. Other countries also have experienced corruption that has rocked their political systems. What is remarkable about India is the persistent anti-incumbent sentiment among its electorate. Since Indira’s victory in her 1971 “garibi hatao” election, only one ruling party has been re-elected to power in the Central Government.

In an important sense, the exception proves the rule because the Congress (I) won reelection in 1984 in no small measure because the electorate saw in Rajiv Gandhi a “Mr. Clean” who would lead a new generation of politicians in cleansing the political system. Anti-incumbent sentiment is just as strong at the state level, where the ruling parties of all political persuasions in India’s major states lost eleven of thirteen legislative assembly elections held from 1991 through spring 1995.

Corruption in simple terms may be described as ‘an act of bribery’. Corruption is defined as the use of public office for private gains in a way that constitutes a breach of law or a deviation from the norms of society. Scales of corruption can be Grand, Middling or Petty and payment of bribes can be due to collusion between the bribe taker and the bribe giver, due to coercion or even anticipatory.

This was the outburst of Mahatma Gandhi against rampant corruption in Congress ministries formed under 1935 Act in six states in the year 1937. The disciples of Gandhi however, ignored his concern over corruption in post-Independence India, when they came to power.

Over sixty years of democratic rule has made the people so immune to corruption that they have learnt how to live with the system even though the cancerous growth of this malady may finally kill it. The Tehelka episode surcharged the political atmosphere of the country but it hardly exposed anything that was unknown to the people of this biggest democratic polity.

Politicians are fully aware of the corruption and nepotism as the main reasons behind the fall of Roman Empire, the French Revolution, October Revolution in Russia, fall of Chiang Kai-Shek Gov­ernment on the mainland of China-and even the defeat of the mighty Congress party in India. But they are not ready to take any lesson from the pages of history.

                                               Pollution

Anything added into the environment that results in producing harmful or poisonous effect on living things is called pollution. Pollution is the process that makes nature’s resources such as land, water, air or other parts of the environment unsafe or unsuitable to use. Pollution can be of many types:  soil, air, water, thermal, radioactive, noise, and light. The toxins released are inhaled by each one of us while we breathe.

Pollution and its Causes

Inhaling poisonous air is as hazardous as smoking. It is not only the humans who are affected from this polluted environment but also the animals. Air is filled with highly toxic gases. These dangerous gases in environment are released by the power industries that burn fossil fuels, industries that dispose wastes in the water, farmers using pesticides, high usage of artificial lights and loud sounds, etc. Each of these leads to generation of the life threatening cause – pollution.

Any use of natural resources at a rate higher than the nature’s capacity to restore itself can result in pollution of air, water, and land. Other than human activities, there are a few periodic natural cycles that also result in release of dangerous stuff. Natural activities other than the human activities like volcanic eruption, dust wildfires, etc also result in creation of pollution.

Globalization is another major cause of pollution. Globalization has become an effective facilitator of environmental degradation.

Conclusion

Every individual owns certain responsibility of maintaining few points such as not throwing garbage all around, growing trees, using public transport instead of their own, etc. We must shun excessive consumption and avoid careless and deliberate disposal of post-consumption waste resources which could otherwise be recycled and would led to pollution control.

Pollution cannot be reduced or controlled if a sense of responsibility towards our Mother Earth is not felt by all concerned.