It is a year since the world reverberated after the fall of the once mighty Lehman Brothers and the cataclysmic events that followed. There is a lot of soul searching going on all over the world to get to the bottom of the crisis and ensure it never occurs again.

To my mind at the bottom of it all is human nature. One of the drivers of human behavior is greed. This has always been so and will persist as long as we inhabit this planet, religions and prophets notwithstanding. Talking of prophets I recall attending a seminar in inter faith relations at which someone asserted that his Prophet was the last. I stirred the audience by asking if there was any need for another prophet at all considering that the 12500 prophets referred to by Islamic theologists seem to have made little difference to basic human weaknesses greed included.

In my understanding, the Wall Street crash of last year was significantly precipitated by un-curbed greed — the sort of greed that does not stir the conscience of financial fat cats to take billions of dollars in bonuses after their organizations have been bailed out by taxpayer money even as the taxpayer has lost his or her job. To be sure financial scandals have been with us all through history and will continue to bedevil us forever.

Given that greed motivates people in big and small ways all over the world why is it that countries like Indonesia, Bangladesh, Nigeria, and India are the top of the list of most corrupt countries while Scandinavian countries and Canada are among the cleanest? Why is it that many countries have been able to keep corruption in some control while India is a perpetual laggard.

I am ashamed whenever I talk of India’s great strides to any audience in the U.S only to be asked why we are so corrupt. The extent of depravity that we see in India is perhaps unparalleled. It has been said that our corrupt Netas (Leaders/politicians) and Babu (Bureaucrats) and contractors have no compunctions in taking away about 80 % of the money that is earmarked for the poorest of the poor under schemes like the National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme. International travelers tell me that the sort of grinding poverty that one sees in India is evident nowhere else in the world barring war torn African nations. The poor people even in the Karachi slum of Orangi in Pakistan seem better fed than the poor in India.

I suggest that what makes some nations relatively clean is that inevitable greed is tempered by the other human emotion — fear. I attended a party at the home of my Indian friend in Virginia last night. He told me that he had installed a burglar alarm at his home. The moment a burglar enters his home by any door or window an alarm would ring in the police station and the police would be at his home IN 2 MINUTES.

He claimed that it is the fear of the police and certain incarceration that kept burglars in check. It made sense to me. Human nature is the same all over the world. However, my friend suggested that such a system might not work in India. The reason? I leave it to you to guess.

Clean nations set up institutions like the police and courts that keep a substantial proportion of the people away from crime. There is nothing morally superior about people in the cleaner countries. They are accustomed to obeying the law. I am told that in some countries where there is tradition of keeping dogs as pets, if such a pet dog were to be unleashed the dog would not cross a road unless he sees a green signal! It is a matter of training till animals and people learn to obey the law instinctively.

In India we have institutions like the police and judiciary in place but these are also corrupt. I was saddened to read top Supreme Court lawyer Prashant Bhushan say that 50% of the Chief Justices of the Supreme Court in the last 15 years were corrupt. Surveys show that the departments with the most horrid reputation for corruption in India are the police and the judiciary — the two institutions that can inspire fear that can keep greed in check.

What can be done to stem this rot? There is a more basic question Why is it critical to control corruption? If we are able to reduce corruption by ay 50% and this money is used for development then in 15 years we will be able to eliminate poverty and attain levels of affluence comparable with Singapore!

The mammoth task of cleansing the system has to start with the top. It is therefore tragic that people who have swindled the country are appointed Cabinet Ministers on the pretext of compulsions of coalition or factional politics. Apart from that the plight of the common man can be summarized in the song from Bollywood movie Amar Prem:

Chingaaree koee bhadake, to saawan use buzaaye
saawan jo agan lagaaye, use kaun buzaaye?

K.R.RAVI