A ONE sided battle that I fear might not help.

I've always been a vocal critic of what happens in India. The peaceful-war ( sounds like an oxymoron) that's happening in India right now with Anna Hazare and his gang of men is no child's play. He's single handedly shaken the conscience of a billion people and more. But, as always, there has to be a flip side. I am not even sure it should be called the "flip side". It is something like this. It is a "peaceful war" waged against the government by the people. The set of people waging the war (mathematically, in the universal set of the country) can be divided into two subsets. The first subset is of the people who want to stop people from accepting bribes. Does that end the fight? Being an Indian to the core (in all the negative sense included), I am sure the other set is the set of people giving the bribe. They are the majority.

Why do we bribe? Leave alone people who force you into bribing them. On a personal level, I think the number of people forced to bribe are far lesser than the number of people willing to bribe. Why are people willing to bribe? Because we are inherently inclined towards breaking rules. In comic circumstances, this is termed "Indianism". We prefer paying a "Rs.100/-" fine for causing an accident as against calling the cop paying the full "fine". We prefer paying "Rs.1000/-" to the guy who comes to inspect our newly built place for any plan deviations. In all this, we do not try to pay the actual fees/fines. The perfect solution to the newly built house inspection scenario is to NOT DEVIATE FROM THE SANCTIONED PLAN. But, we do it. Blatantly. Because we know we will get away with it for a meager amount.

Where is the basic fault? Where lies the culprit? It lies in the fact that we are what we are in terms of the number of people. With the kind of population and the kind of literacy levels, we are taught one thing directly or indirectly by the society, "survive by any means". We are inherently designed to behave selfish. We are inherently designed to NOT care. We are inherently designed to take the "short-cut". We are inherently "uncivil". Things are looking up but very slowly.

Some cities fare better than others when it comes to civic sense. This is not a shot in the dark. This is personal experience. Being a hyderabadi by birth and having done my engineering in bangalore, I see one stark difference between the two cities. Civic sense. Bangaloreans have more civic sense than hyderabadis. Period. We (hyderabadis) disregard even the damn white solid line at the traffic junctions! We take pride in stopping at the lights beyond the solid white line. Bottomline: there are so many hyderabadis in bangalore. Learn from them! We do not do it. It's just not us (Indians in general).

I still remember my orientation at SPSU. The first thing we were told by this chinese lady was " Asians, especially Indians, please do not try to bribe the cops when they pull you over." I think she generalized with the word "Asians" just so the Indians do not feel too bad.

I have deviated a little from where I started. That's just me. But, what is the bottom-er-line? "Do not do wrong... You will never have to pay the bribe to escape your wrong doing." Pay the cop and ask for the receipt to ensure the money goes to the government. Do not deviate from sanctioned plans so you do not have to bribe the home inspector. Do not drive without a license. Pay your fines in whole and ensure you have receipts. Do not buy a chocolate candy without a receipt. it might take just a 30 seconds longer and it might be just a matter of "50 Paise" tax that you are saying. When a billion people do not pay the "50 paise", it costs the exchequer half a billion rupees. That is FIVE followed by SIX zeroes. Do not let the med-shop guy write your bill on the paper-handbag in which he packs your meds. Pay up.

The Lokpal Bill will do its job after we make sure the tax money reaches the government. Let's do our part first.

Disclaimer: All views personal. Opinions welcome. Open to discussion.