Corruption, a moral impairment of society
Dr Sheikh Arshid Ahmad
The responsibility is essential to be stimulated in every individual’s life, and within a society as a whole. Social transformation of a community can only be acquired through ethical and legal series of norms of the society and with that style of every individual’s life can act as a strong medium for collection, structuring and broad dissemination of information and services for public procurement and benefits.
On this kind of mechanism an individual’s accountability towards society increases and even government officials are too accountable in front of the society and public. Working of officials in government departments must be transparent and open access to public accountability that can help government officials to focus on glorious discharge of duty and services with assessment of impact of good governance.
For improvement and upgrading of oneself towards the proper function of the society an individual should act as a supervisor with a kind of mindset and actions to know the responsibility towards the society and omit the kind of wrong notion that to support the society when it favors him.
In this era of globalization and rapid development of information technology, every party and institution involved in social agenda needs to have a systematic and comprehensive preparation to deal with the every kind anti social evil and restore the then realm of the society.
The current style of life that is more into material-related, leads an individual’s intention to be luxurious in material world and bringing the trend of gaining the material more and more and involving in malpractices like bribery or corruption. This causes the individual to perform the activities that are devoid of devotion and submission to Allah.
The responsibility of promoting positive values and changes in a community is on treating the society as an institution where everyone has its assigned responsibility towards the construction and maintenance of the society. This concept obscures the individual to be aware about the roles and responsibility towards the public and society as a whole. If the individual adopts individuality that can imbalance the society with the big spaces and splash abnormality that can cause the people in charge to have quite a difficulty in coping with the management and beneficial approach towards the society.
Every country and every recognized individual of the society has charged in a role that the society must be aware about the menace of corruption and how it is considered as a medium for the spread of discouraging and imbalance acquisition. This study is particularly supported by another research that the role of society as an institution to aware people about the basic fundamentals and ways of establishment of its society in linkage of community services.
Corruption has become menace in our society and has deep rooted effect on every aspect of the society. The way of corruption has increased globally and has changed the socio-cultural patterns and living values among the global community. This pervasive act urges everybody and social institution or organizations to be involved on a social agenda to devise a comprehensive policy to eradicate corruption from the society.
Accordingly, the role of higher officials working in any institution or department has dynamic function in removing the existing menace. The early history of human beings working in any official- social link has shown that the working authorities effectively act as an agent for community transformation and play role for the development of society, community and nation that then results in a great civilization without any notice of corruption. Each and every country has been working and leading many strategies and policies to lead the foundation of the corruption free society.
The findings so far suggest that corruption need to be proactively and systematically managed, and effective strategies need to be set up according to current demands to corruption from the root level.
We live in an era of widely publicized challenges and have become part of our society. These challenges have become more serious, problematic and it becomes very difficult to encounter them. Corruption is one of the challenges that is form of dishonest and unethical conduct by a person entrusted with a position of authority, often to acquire personal benefit. Why are we not making better progress against this unethical conduct of corruption?
In the society the morals are the principles of good conduct, widely accepted by all to leave the society challenge less and with equality in rights and responsibilities. Corruption undermines the rule of law, creates economic harm, violates human rights, and illicitly protects facilitators and accomplices.
It snatches responsibilities towards the society and greatly impact the life style of common people. This unethical conduct is selfish or self-seeking behavior without regard for the valid claims or human rights of others.
Where do ethics come from? We learn them in the same way we learn all skills based on daily life. People often overestimate the ethicality of their own behavior, failing to recognize underlying, self-serving biases that promote misconduct. We pretend to be ethical and morally good and objective in delivering social norms but sometimes we do mess with some ethical values and produce unethical conduct in that blind spot. Thinking ethically over any act always results in marvelous blog in the society.
But learning and application of principles in practice is an incremental process, moving from smaller acts to more consistent courses of conduct. Ethics might be the most important skill of all, because it provides the path to appreciate that there is a greater purpose in life than self-interest.
People are moral agents, have moral responsibilities, but many have never learned the principles for ethical decision-making but not for taking the responsibility of the society as core member of it.
Corruption is constant in the society and occurs in all civilizations. It has many effects, both on the economy and the society at large. Among the most common causes of corruption are the political and economic environment and affects business operations, employment and investments.
There are number of initiatives which have been taken on significant level and they require participants to enact laws. Unfortunately, these initiatives focus on structural reforms: laws, policies, procedures, and technical assistance, to reduce the opportunities for corrupt conduct and enforce anti-corruption provisions.
The education is the initiative in preventing crime and corruption, and promoting a culture that supports the rule of law.
People need to be accountable even without a camera looking over their shoulder or constant police surveillance. People must be motivated to act ethically, and establish a moral identity, that supports conduct in the interest of others, rather than selfish or self-seeking behavior.
People need to have better moral integrity and promote ethical conduct. People are under continuous pressure on many fronts: business concerns, government operations, medical access, and education, among others. Ethical conduct, resistant to corrupt influences, can be found in unlikely places, but it must begin with greater individual accountability that occurs with higher ethical standards developed through teaching, training, and practice.
Personal and social happiness come from actions that benefit others, rather than exploit or ignore them. People respect other people with high moral standards. There is freedom found in not yielding to our basest desires, and in living openly and cooperatively with others rather than secretively and fraudulently.
It is time to look beyond structural and institutional reforms to reduce opportunities for corrupt conduct, and enforce anti-corruption provisions. It is time to also focus on individual moral education and training to reduce the number of motivated actors seeking unethical advantage.
Education is key to sustainable development, undermining the quality of education and access to it, corruption significantly hampers the attainment of the every kind of development. High quality and accessible education empowers societies and individuals and thus prevents the individuals for being involved in corruption.
Corruption has become a menace and has long lasting ill effects on the society and even poor people also become victims, their prosperity and happiness has a far name in their families. Every individual of the society has a responsibility and should put an effort in reinforcing the status of norms of the society. This can help community transformation and it’s mobility in order to achieve a quality way of life. Efforts and cooperation of all groups, from the government to the local community, are essential to empower and reinforce the status of an individual in the national or even global level, and consequently restore the prestige of its main part of the society.
To deal with corruption is not unambiguous; some countries have achieved great success in dealing with it. The first condition is in any case to ensure freedom (personal freedom, economic freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, etc.) and democracy, and then education and awareness of people. It is necessary to start using good practices of countries that are similar to each other (religion, habits, tradition, ethics and morality) and that have common history that can be effective tools to combat the corruption.
Remember, Integrity, transparency and the fight against corruption have to be part of the culture. They have to be taught as fundamental values.
(The author is a research scholar and hails from Kuchmullah Tral)
