Just think, who is corrupt.

This is one of those topic, about which I think a lot, but never really want to write about. I am not writing this one, anguished, or hurt, or tormented, or distressed by the moral character of our public servants, selected or elected. Neither does it have to do anything to vent out my feelings towards the way system works here.

My doubts have more of a theoretical context associated with them.
All I want to ask is, who is corrupt?

• Some minister who accepts bribes of the order of 100s of crores for changing allotment policies of our nation's valuable resource?
• Or some other minister and his accomplice, who plays the dirtiest games for misappropriating assets, while managing some sports extravaganza? And later claim they are all innocent, after having grossed some 16 billion dollars in the process?
• Or some senior babu in a govt. office exchanging bribes to the tune of lakhs and crores of rupees for a favorable response to affirm?
• How about one of those lower level babu, trying to make his small cut to multiples of 10000 bucks?
• Maybe some police inspector asking to give out a couple of 'Hari patti' for making verification faster while you toil to get your passport ready?
• Or some traffic constable willing not to open his challan book for a paltry 50 bucks?
• What about a forest officer accepting monthly cut so as to let illegal cutting of forest trees continue?
• And how about a peon asking for 'chai nashte ka kharcha' for getting your files move a little faster in income tax dept.

 The answer would be a yes for all of them above, right?

 But how about these guys:

• A guy who gets all his personal xerox done at his office, and saves money to the tunes of couple of thousands per month?
• A guy, who gets false petrol bills from the petrol pump and gets them reimbursed?
• A person who submits false medical bills claiming he has back problems, and getting compensation from his organization for the same?
• Some friend not turning up for a project meet, citing untrue health reasons so that some other guy does his share of work?
• A student who lies to his teacher and gets a makeup test, telling that he was ill and hence didn't appear for the test, while the actual reason was that he had been gaming and hence did not study.
• An employee, who fakes the number of kilometers and rate per kilometers, to get that extra unspend sum from his travel allowance limt?
• A student getting need based assistance based on fake parental income certificates
• Some friend taking benefits of 2 scholarship at same time when scholarship terms expressly forbid it

I am sure it won't be a yes for everyone this time.

And thats because we have seen this happening somewhere around us. In our neighborhood. In our lives. Maybe, we have done it ourselves sometime. And we deem things to be corruption, only if money is exchanging sides, that too in big numbers. And till you are bending the rules, not breaking them, everything is fine, right? And till you haven't been caught, you are obviously clean, right? Sadly, these are the norms prevalent in our society.