Freedom from what?.. Independence from whom?

Freedom from what?.. Independence from whom?

1857 – First war of independence, 1921- Civil disobedience movement, 1930- Salt Satyagraha, 1942 – Quit India movement.

Mangal pandey to Sardar Patel, Netaji to Gandhiji.  Kittur Chennamma to Rani Lakshmi Bai, fought, saved and pulled our nation from foreign rule.  Today, our country is governed by constitution and it is a Sovereign, Republic, Democratic country. 

We just celebrated another year of independence, we must ask ourselves what freedom and independence means to us?After the end of foreign we have been ruled by corruption & bribery.  For me, a freedom must be from corruption and Independence is from Bribery matters most. 

Let’s us look at some facts:  

As per IMF report, Bribery and corruption costs the world economy as much as 2 trillion dollars every year.  This money lost every year is equal to 2 percent of world GDP.  What an irony, as per World Bank report, India is now a 2 trillion dollar economy.  Look at the potential of corruption money, we can run country like India with this money.  How does all this happen? Dear friends, ask yourself if you have not paid any bribe in one or other form?   What is response?

Exactly, a study conducted by transparency international in year 2015 found that more than 62% of Indians had firsthand experience of paying bribes.  Our country was ranked 76th out of 175 countries in corruption.    This means, half of the countries of the world are less corrupt than India.  As per government reports, India Govt loses about 2 lakh crores annually due to corruption and approx. 40,000 crores lost due to delay in projects due to corruption & approximately 500B$ in Swiss Banks.  If corruption was not there, all our public enterprises would have improved their profit margin by almost 20%.  According to Economist, if corruption in India reduced to the level of scandinavian countries, then annual FDI investments would rise to 12% and GDP would grow at additional 1.5%.

You may be wondering how to stop this? How to proclaim independence from corruption and bribery?  You may be thinking is every system in our country is such bad?  Not really friends. As citizens of this country, we need to believe in our system and need to be fearless.   Let me narrate you a story of mine which happened during year 2013.

I was building my new home and my electrical contractor ran away with the money that I have paid to get the permanent electricity connection to my new home (that included the bribe part as well).  Now, I have to make our own arrangements.   I approached DISCOM office and completed all the formalities to get the new meter.

They asked to come after a week due to software issue.  When I went back we had to listen to same story.  I requested them, pleaded them but there was no mercy.  It did not take me long to understand that I need to deal with them under table.  To be honest with you, I did not had that extra money to give away.  I decided to fight back, my wife joined me. Anna Hazare’s photo which was stuck on back of my car (during the times of Janlokpal bill time) smiled at us.  We decided to go and check with them every day with our paragon chappals.  It reached to a point that our house warming was just a week away and there was no electricity, we both decided to go there and sit in the office till our work gets done.  On that day, we came to know that executive engineer going to be around in that office.  We waited for his arrival.  We had our housewarming invitation cards with us.  As soon as he came, we handed over the invitation card.  He asked us if he knows us. We said, yes, because we are coming here from last three weeks.  We told him that we not only know him but several others in his office.  We invited him to be a part of our candle light dinner during house warming.  No need to explain, we had new meters installed in next few hours.  He was a very sensitive and an honest officer.  In this case, our persistence paid off.

We fought corruption in Munnabhai style to proclaim our independence.  

Friends, fighting corruption starts from me & you.  There are many ways to fight the corruption, we used one such tool as “Invitation” but there are several others eg :1.  Ipaidabribe.com – which helps to capture the data related to bribe payments . 2. RTI , 3.Central vigilance web and there are several NGOs who can fight on behalf of you. 

Our ancestors’ fought for our independence from foreign rule and now it is our turn to fight the corruption for our independence.  Should we celebrate two independence days? Perhaps yes, in the “irony rule of corruption” it is that independence which is from corruption matters most.  We need to remember, Freedom movement is an ongoing process.  

Written as a part of my CC7 project speech as per TMI guidelines. 

References

http://www.transparencyindia.org/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_in_India