This morning I was in a quandry. It comes after weeks of banging my head against the wall on various business related issues. And realising that people aren’t as honest as you think that they are – or that concepts of integrity vary.
So I asked my father. Who has less integrity – a person who takes a bribe or a person who is not true to his word?
Responded Dad (who in his avtaar as a Government Servant handled import of petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals and newsprint during the license raj – and could have made a fortune that would have covered several generations, instead of maintining a reputation for scrupulous honesty) – the person who can’t stick to his word is worse, because atleast the person you bribe can be relied on to do the job.
Is this the world that we live in – where morality and integrity are so ambigious that lies and half lies pass off as business tactics? Where you can no longer rely on someone’s word? Yeh Duniya agar mil bhi jaaye to kya hai?
Would I do the same given the circumstances? I may give an emphatic no now. But, tomorrow if the stakes are higher will integrity get sacrificied in the altar of profitability and convinience?
Maybe i should just eke out my living as a poorly paid teacher.
Harini, we have come to accept corruption as normal, as a way of life… the attitude being, paisa dena hi hai to atleast let me bribe those who will give me my money’s worth. I keep hearing about how the DMK government (at one time considered the most corrupt ever rule in TN) is better than the AIADMK one in Tamilnadu – atleast with the former, people felt that they took money but did what was expected from them – with the latter, they took money and then beat you up for asking about it!
Hi
this is not so much about corruption or lack of integrity in public life. even there we are in a quandry. who is worse a Sharad Pawar who is known to make money but delivers or a Govinda who doesn’t but does nothing.
it is about honour and keeping your word.
it is all the times we avoid calls and say I am in a meeting. or a client says you will get paid by friday (which friday, raam jaane) or a student who tells you maam i was unwell – when you saw her at a barrista’s. these are little things but these are big things.
All the years i was in the UK – i could believe ordinary people there. here, it is different. somehow we seem to be engineered to tell half truths.
when they say that you get the government you deserve, i am not surprised. we deserve this lot. most of us do the same. take a bribe, tell a lie – ki farak padta hai. end of the day you are deceiving someone somewhere – and it seems to be ok!
As a colleague of mine put it very aptly “woh dandhe ka usool bhi nahi rakhte hain”
I hope and pray I never ever become like that – where convinience overrides honour.
I have more contempt for people who lie – to get their job done – than those who are corrupt. Maybe that reflects my own ambigious morality!
atleast the person you bribe can be relied on to do the job.
My dad has encountered the rascals who wouldn’t do their job even after greasing their palms. What would you call such a person?
hI patrix
i don’t know. what is lower that lower? a politician maybe?
Its these questions of morality; issues of honesty, integrity, lies – to others and to oneself, questions of faith and trust, of certainty and uncertainty, that makes a twenty one year old feel, “i dont know what to do”
it has nothing to do with age!
i am many years older than you and there still days that i feel like that!
I guess that the best way is to follow the path of what you feel is right.
and right does not mean convinient. apologise when you have made a mistake, honour a committment that you have made – no matter what, turn up at the time that you have promised. Little things. But, they are – at the end of the day – big things.