E-Book - Mahatma Gandhi

Is There an Alternative to… 177considered lucrative go by auction. It seems that unlike water,money seeps or flows to higher levels. Admissions are bought,marks are bought, invigilators are terrorised or bought, jobs arebought. There is a rate for the job of a peon, a clerk, a primaryschoolteacher, and so on. You do not get the job, or the postingor the transfer or the promotion unless you pay. Files do notmove, traffic does not move, documents do not get registered;sometimes, even letters do not get delivered; electricconnections are given or disconnected, gas cylinders arrive orfail to arrive, railway reservations are not available, a deadbody may not be located in the morgue, or a corpse crematedunless you grease palms. When the processes prescribed by lawand institutions can be circumvented, undermined, renderednugatory and farcical by corruption or the might of physicalforce, what is it that controls the system-not Law, not theConstitution, but money, and the force of arms.The interests of the seekers of political power or thepedlars of influence, the merchants of greed, the mafia and thegoondas have got so inextricably intertwined that the systemthat was launched four decades ago has been subverted beyondredemption.It should now be easy for us to answer the questionswith which we started. The system has failed to deliver thegoods. It is not individuals who have failed, but it is the systemitself that has been subverted. It is no longer possible to hopethat there are elements in the system that can help to redeem it.To which institution shall we look for a reversal of the processor for breaking the stranglehold that is choking the system?-theparties, the legislatures, the Judiciary, the bureaucracy? The salthath truly lost its flavour. Wherewith shall it be salted? Do wethen go back to Dandi?If a system cannot be corrected from within, it has to be