Start with the premise that we are all corrupt. Everyone of us. If we don’t do that, we can never win. It is just that we are petty in our corruption so we resent it when the experts rake it in and we don’t. Corruption is an absolute. You cannot be partly corrupt, like you cannot be partly pregnant. So, whether you buy a cinema ticket in black or get your administrative paperwork hastened or cheat on your taxes and then pay off the system there is no difference. If we all agreed from this moment not to pay one paisa more for any service regardless of the agony the corrupt would starve and wither. So, whether it is out of need, convenience, expediency or because we can afford it, we are all to blame.

This current indignation is all blarney. Over the past 60 years millions of Indians have played the game when it suited them.

Indian corruption has gotten out of hand. This seems to be the pet beef at the moment as if it was fine so long as it was at 6.2 or 7.1 on the Richter scale of corruption. Now, it is gone past the danger mark and so a tsunami of civil protest rises across the country, its epicentre being a 73-year-old man called Anna Hazare.

I am happy for him but let’s get real.

First, the mistake…we equate nepotism, misuse of power and networking, injustice, lack of due process, blackmail, authoritarianism and victimisation and discrimination at their insidious worst with corruption. While they may be kissing cousins there is a subtle degree of separation.

These elements are insidious and ugly and need to be defined as so. They are the evil enemies of our society.

Corruption, as seen as an exchange of money for getting work done in India, is a lubricant and grinds the wheels of society. It is also a very honest version that functions in our country and I do not say this lightly nor wish to sound facetious. It works. In many countries you are conned. Indian corruption generally delivers on its promise. Do a time and motion study and you will find that paying the extra bundle is worth it in time and hassle saved. I don’t say it is right, I say, it happens and we are part of this equation. Therefore, without being slippery clever or incurring your wrath, corruption is like a rich man’s wedding in that money percolates to the lower levels of society. Just as much as I have always been baffled by those who attack lavish weddings as samples of conspicuous consumption I am so glad that the flower man and the horseman and tent people are getting that money at home rather than in Phuket. You want to have a million dollar wedding, go ahead, be ostentatious, knock yourself out. 

By the same token, if someone wants to pay to leap ahead of the pack so be it…that is human nature. You do it all the time.

So how come we are all suddenly fed up with our close ally whenever we needed it?

Our rage at political and bureaucratic ugliness, its cruel indifference to us, the electorate, and their arrogance and ill-gotten wealth is what makes us forget how we have singly and collectively collaborated in the conspiracy to keep corruption alive.  In corruption we see their faces, not ours. Hence, the fury.

Yet none of us are innocent. When you are buying a spurious DVD someone else is buying spurious medicine and spurious car parts. This virus is now in the national system and no amount of sloganeering is going to change it. Only you and I can do that when the hydra-headed monster has all its heads (start at the top) chopped off in one swell swoop and we won’t do that…not the college student who doesn’t mind paying for stolen question papers. Not the salaried parent who will gladly pay out to get a seat in school for the child. Not the wealthy who will pay off to smother even high crime. Not the bureaucrats who blatantly make money. Not the politicians who do not even care what you think when they make it. Not the celebs who propel the media and bend it to their will, nor the powerhouses that own them and allow them selective targets in a travesty called free press. Not the businessman who needs his licences and his clearances, not the dalal and the middleman and the tout and whole gang of Fagins that run our country. We all have the built in flexibility to justify it if it suits us. 

Not even the pious whose shrill and naïve cadence makes you wonder if India without corruption would slide to a halt. Jumping the queue in anything is a national sport and pastime. Which is perhaps why we have leapfrogged everything Fate in her caprice has thrown at us.

Mr Hazare has woken us up to the harsh reality. Nonsense. Harsh reality was not hiding under the sofa. Harsh reality was staring us in the face. We have been wide awake always. We knew corruption was there, we espoused it, fed it, nourished it and protected it. Now, it is time to be cute and hypocritical about it.