Ethics and Corruption in Governments Around the World

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Ethics are the means by which one can decide what actions are permissible and what actions are not. Government ethics constitutes the application of ethical rules and norms to the government. It covers issues of honesty and transparency in government, political corruption, police corruption, bribery, legislative ethics, regulatory ethics, conflict of interest, avoiding the appearance of impropriety, open government, and legal ethics.
In India, bureaucracy is arranged in a way that people can move up the ladder only on the basis of merit; therefore, it is a system that is meant to be objective, impersonal and unbiased. However, being a highly traditional society, forces like caste, family ties and personal preferences play an integral part in life. The pressure that emerges from ocietal and familial expectations can be so extreme that often public servants cave to these pressures. A desire for greater material prosperity and a greed for power without a core foundation of strong values and ethics can induce one to act in a way harmful to the larger good of society. Corruption is a key manifestation of the failure of ethics. Unfortunately, corruption has become a matter of habit for many people these days, ranging from scandals involving high profile VIPs to corruption touching the everyday life of common people. Excesses in elections (use of illegitimate money, rigging votes, attempts to buy votes, booth capturing and violence) and abuse of power in the public office have become major afflictions of the political process over the years.
The Bofors scandal was a major corruption scandal in India in the 1980s and 1990s, initiated by Congress politicians and implicating the then PM, Rajiv Gandhi and several others. The scale of the cor...

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...lobe. Amidst the many corruption scandals that India has seen, Bofors stands out as it has served as a continuous symbol and metaphor for political corruption at the very top over all these years. It has aided to raise public consciousness against corruption in a way previous and future scandals put together failed to do. It has also helped us understand about how various institutions perform in relation to corruption, how the very people in whose hands we trusted the functioning of our nation to be safe forget the promises made in their oaths to serve their own vested interests and what kind of privileges and bargaining power people up there in the hierarchy can enjoy by exploiting and manipulating the chair. It is ironical that in the end, it is us, the people of the nation who suffer due to the acts of the very people who we selected while they enjoy at our stake.

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