What is the biggest hurdle in the way of launching a campaign against corruption? It is not the scarcity of resources in men or money, it is the pessimism that nothing can be done, that any struggle against the corrupt is doomed to failure because the corruption is all pervasive, it is part of human nature, that the Indians have always been like this and this is how they will remain, et al. Equally damaging are the views that the nature will take care of it, that we should wait patiently for a movement against corruption to rise from among the oppressed, that whatever goes up has to come down and so corruption too would come down.
I agree that the situation is pretty bad but it is not entirely hopeless. Even in our own country there are examples of things made to improve. It may sound incredible but in the Maoist-infested Chhattisgarh the public distribution system has been improved to such an extent that hardly any poor family goes without getting its normal quota of highly subsidised food grains. The DMK is no paragon of honesty, as has amply been demonstrated on the national stage, but Tamilnadu’s public distribution system is functioning very efficiently and surprisingly equitably. This just goes to show that whenever sufficient political will has been mustered the system has overcome corruption. Our job, therefore, is to compel the political class to summon the necessary will, and we can do so only when we are sufficiently organised and focused.
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