Corruption

Corruption is a major problem in India, and a major theme in newspaper headlines. It is pervasive, and blatant. Topics around corruption certainly abound in the states as well, but they are less overt, less all-encompassing, and they also don’t drain the nation’s resources to the point of impoverishing everyone else. Or maybe there are enough resources in the US such that even if there IS that much corruption, it doesn’t impoverish most of the population, and is therefore more tolerated/tolerable? The numbers associated with corruption are head-spinning…I include a snippet from an online article:

One of my colleagues pointed out a scam that was uncovered about Indian government payments to workers, where 45,000 paychecks were going to people that didn’t exist or were now deceased. I pointed out that we have stories like that all the time in the US as well, with people that are deceased still receiving checks. My Indian friend pointed out that in the Indian-case, though, this was exposed over a year ago, and the non-existent-people were STILL getting paid. He contrasted the US situation (which looks more like incompetence) to the Indian situation, which he believes is more of a scam.

The funny thing is that there are also so many bureaucratic processes in place to ostensibly curb corrupt practices. The complicated processes here that you go through to get a visa, bank account, sim card, etc. Somehow, the bureaucratic processes become their own standalone entities, unrelated to ultimately curbing corruption or other bad behaviors. Perhaps it’s akin to all of the security measures the “common person” experiences at airports, only to discover some really bad agents got on the plane despite it all. Below is a snippet from Dave Barry’s 2010 Year in Review substantiating this phenomenon:
On the terror front, New York City police, alerted by Times Square street vendors, discover a smoking SUV packed with explosives — a violation of many city ordinances, including the ban on smoking. Fortunately, the car bomb is disarmed, and a suspect is later captured at Kennedy Airport by sharp-eyed TSA officers trained to spot suspicious behavior.
Ha ha! Just kidding, of course. The suspect is captured by U.S. Customs agents at the last minute after boarding a Dubai-bound plane filled with passengers who, like the suspect, had all been carefully screened by the TSA to make sure they were not carrying more than three ounces of shampoo.