ARE YOU A BRIBE-GIVER

ARE YOU A BRIBE-GIVER

Who approaches first - bribe giver or bribe taker? The question seems to be very simple and easily answerable. But, the answer will not be same from all. One group will say " bribe taker" and others will answer "bribe giver". In fact this question is similar to the famous question "who came first - Egg or Hen".

First, let me accept that "bribe givers" offer bribe first. Generally, we, as human being, don't want any hassle for any thing. We want smooth trouble free comfortable life. We want to follow the short-cut route to our target. Our basic nature to follow short cuts forces us to break or bypass rules. This is the starting step of bribe system. It makes the bribe giver's life easy and successful at the cost of others. Once we get the taste of success through such short cut ways at a premium, we get habituated to that and apply the same trick everywhere. System and procedures become too much troublesome for us. We presume that the steps are deliberately made to help the concerned officials for their pecuniary gain.. We call them fools who try to follow rules and struggle at every step. Better be practical, accept the existing practice and try only to minimize the bribe amount. We all follow this practice silently without any protest. Though, given a chance, we never forget to criticize the practice vociferously. These bribe givers are the starting point of this category of corruption. Once the bribe taker get the taste of bribe they make it an unwritten system. Now the bribe givers become bribe payers.

Now, is it the "bribe takers" demand the bribe first? We know that after confirming my wait listed ticket the concerned railway person demand money for his service as if he does not receive salary and appointed by us as agent for getting my ticket confirmed. We also know that IT agents demand extra service charges to meet the demand of the IT officials just to ensure that the officials do their duty properly. It is also true that there are many officials who threaten the suppliers/contractors of dire consequences and squeeze out money. In such cases demanding bribe comes before offering bribe.

Why people ask for bribe? This originates from our tendency to earn maximum with minimum effort. Doesn't it highlight the same nature of human being which was responsible to change a person to a bribe-payer. So the human nature to earn money or service in short cut ways is the reason behind this whole system of giving or taking bribe. The only difference is that "bribe givers" give bribe to achieve an already set target, whereas "bribe takers" do not have any predetermined target. That's why the amount of bribe is generally decided by the givers in the first instance and subsequently it increases with the receipt of higher quotes from bribe-bidders. This is also the reason behind different bribe-rates for the same job in different states and also different persons of same location ask different rates or types of bribes (materials, services..) for the same type of job. Hence we can infer that the bribe takers only start this practice and bribe givers become the victim of that.

When caught, the bribe takers say that they got allured by the offer from the bribe givers and could not control themselves but got helplessly trapped to their offer. Whereas the bribe givers justify by saying that they had no other option but to pay the bribe since otherwise their job would not have been done as the bribe takers were in driver's seat with their full authority and we have to meet their demand to satisfy them. So, it's a case of "hen or egg - who came first". We know that bribe taking and giving are equally punishable act. We, at the same time, should honestly admit that nearly all of us have given bribes in some form or other sometimes in our life. Obviously the bribe givers are a big majority. In contrast bribe takers are a very small group. So, it should be a majority's decision to drive away this unwanted minority, who are the source of all unethical activities, and strengthen our nation. All the bribe givers should strongly decide not to pay bribe in any form to anybody. Only after that we can think of a country where people will forget the meaning of the bribe, commission, kickback, percentage etc. Let us sincerely fight off the disease and confine the presence of the word "bribe" within the dictionary only.