From the grass-root level of a government-run organization to the top of it, a term that is said to keep the employees alive and their kids fed is chai-pani. The norm might be catching up with some private organizations too. Donations in schools, vanishing funds in organizations said to be carrying out social work, sifarish in job areas- and before a ‘victim’ of corruption thinks he has had ‘enough’, he has illogical, unexpected, elongated telephone and electricity bills waiting to be paid on his desk.
So if having to bribe the chaprasi to get to talk to an officer or giving huge amount of ‘charity’ to an adoption centre isn’t enough, then how much actually is? Sky is never the limit, not the least for the ever-greedy, ever-demanding ‘bribe-takers’ who think bribery is so very normal that they have devised euphemisms for the term ‘bribe’ itself.
Not everybody in the system is a part of this wave, you may say. I agree. But the very few who are not in the wave are forced to stay as sediments. It is very difficult for the conscience-followers to rise above the corrupt and surf the waves without getting drenched.
While we keep our fingers crossed and wait for the sediments to shed their fears and rise above the water-level (before we are swept away by a flood), we try also to measure the depth and try to find out what the ‘height of corruption’ is(Is there a measuring instrument long enough?)
