Corruption: Destroying the soul of Bhutan.

What is corruption?  The definition of corruption to me is very simple: It is doing what we are not supposed to be doing. By the same logic, it would also mean not doing what we are supposed to be doing, be it as a public servant, a private entrepreneur, a religious leader or as anyone in any capacity. To me corruption simply goes beyond the world Banks definition of "the abuse of public office for private gain." Corruption pervades abuse of anything by anyone, not just the public office only.

    Corruption in Bhutan takes various forms; the most prevalent form of corruption in Bhutan are: embezzlement, abuse of authority, nepotism and favoritism, etc. The very recent and one of the most heinous of corruption in our country took place in the Ministry of Health. The officials concerned for procurement of hospital equipments had been siphoning off millions of ngultrum from the public, which is branded to be bigger scam than commonwealth game scandal in India. For an instance, a plastic bucket worth Nu.600 only, was brought for Nu. 7500. This means the official had pocketed Nu. 6900 for their personal consumption. Could any patriot person, who respects his country and the king, have this kind of nerve to carry out this inestimable and astonishing crime? Such people should be brought to justice, and sooner the better. This is one example of corruption of mass scale, and I bet there are hundreds of such crimes committed in the country every now and then.

One of the rampant forms of corruption taking place in our country is that of government officials falsely claiming TA/DA. They either claim the amount for tours that they have never taken, or for number of days more than actual days of their tour. And, sadly, this practice does not look like to get any better in the coming days for I have come across some civil servant aspirants opting for post that has opportunity for most number of tours, not the job that they feel that they can do effectively and efficiently, and, contribute the maximum for the betterment  of our nation. Yes, this is also corruption.

Other form of corruption is a "passive corruption." In this form of corruption, almost all Bhutanese, me included, are involved, except for few people like His Majesty and Aum Neten Zam. This happens when so called uncorrupted people do not raise their voice against corruption. Let alone fighting corruption themselves, I have often come across many  senior citizens, highly educated and with no education, dissuading enthusiastic youths, from joining Anti Corruption Commission. They fear backlash from the society. They say joining ACC will lead to creation of so many enemies in one’s life, and will have to hurt the sentiment of so many people. Yes, this is also corruption. In fact, more dangerous than the actual corruption.

As for creating enemies while joining ACC, I remembered Gandhiji's words of wisdom from his autobiography "The Story of my experiment with truth." In the autobiography , Gandhiji  have said, only the people of Ravana’s thinking could become enemies of Rama. Thus, only corrupted people would become the enemies of people who are fighting against corruption in the country. As for the concern of hurting people's sentiment while fighting against corruption, I remembered Trungpa Rinpoche's word “an idiotic compassion." This kind of compassion toward corruption is not only cowardly; it is also "idiotic compassion" as said by Trungpa Rinpoche. Thus, it is very imperative that we do away with these kinds of harmful idiosyncrasies’, and rally for the big fight against corruption before corruption annihilate our country's peace and prosperity which we have long cherished and secured under the benevolent rule of our Bodhisattva kings.

     Corrupted people are to our country, Bhutan, what terrorist are to the west and the Middle East countries. Corrupted people are terrorist without weapons. They destroy our country, not with weapons like AK 47 and bomb, but with brain (cunning brain of course) and pen. They destroy the country inside out. There might not be terrorist groups like Al Qaeda, Lashkar E-taiba, Taliban, Hamas, etc.  in Bhutan that poses imminent threat to the security of our nation's geographical boundaries, but there are very cold-blooded assassins lurking openly for ambush in every corner of our country, to extinguish the system of freedom and fairness in the country: they are called "CORRUPTED PEOPLE" Corrupted people are traitors who do not respect the three roots of our country, namely, king, country and the people.

The corrupted people have the least gratitude to the government and their fellow citizens. Or else, how could they betray the government after having had invested a huge fortune for their upbringing and education? How could they siphon off millions of money meant for welfare of fellow Bhutanese?! How can they have such obnoxious guts to be so selfish? Most importantly, how can we hate corruption so much and not speak a word against it? Is this not connivance?

      Therefore, it is my invincible belief that to extinguish the flames of corruption, we all need to ostracize corruption in our society. To do this, we need to educate our people as of why corruption is destructive to our nation-politically, economically, and from social point of view. The awareness on corruption needs to go beyond educating people only about penalties and punishment of corruption from legal point of view. In short, we need to educate people as of why corruption is a threat to the freedom and prosperity of individual person living in the country. This much we must do, and the responsibilities lie in the hands of every Bhutanese, not only with the ACC.

     So, let us all cultivate an intelligent hatred to hate corruption in our country. Let us all, with our souls united, have no tolerance towards corruption. Let us all not be compassionate towards few corrupted people for the sake of more than six hundred thousand fellow Bhutanese. May Corruption live short in Bhutan.