It sucks to be honest

More so in India. There seems to be no incentive to be honest. I wonder why so many people keep trumpeting about vacuous words like honesty, integrity etc ad nauseam. A little reading and one could come up with a whole lot of examples why it sucks to be honest.

And that's exactly the reason why it's important to glorify people who commit themselves to maintain integrity.

Murder on the oil front

Ofcourse, the first mention goes to the latest victim – Manjunath, the IIML alumnus who was murdered in cold blood for trying to be sincere in his job. His story sounds like THE perfect script for a Bollywood movie: Hero gets a good education; unlike a lot of others, he decides to serve a Govt. company, and indirectly the country – which is a path less traveled by; he tries to seal an IOC outlet for adulterating oil; refuses offers of bribe; doesn’t yield to the threats; the ‘villans’ call him alone. It’s a perfect start for a picture perfect end.

Except that it’s not.

It’s real life, mind you. He gets murdered in cold blood, on a day when CAT was the focus of arguably the whole country. Every newspaper worth a mention devoted space to CAT – the window to dollar dreams and investment bank jobs. But then, our hero certainly wasn’t the character who figured in that highest-offer-till-date story.

What adds to the angst is that he chose to work where all the critics-in-mother-earth wanted every IITian and IIMite to work – to contribute to the country, residing in India. Whether the ‘brain drain’ from these institutes is a permanent loss to our country deserves a separate post, but it’s surprising that a story that’s very, very similar to that of S. Dubey (the IIT graduate) hasn’t got half that attention. Didn’t we call it a perfect story? Just count the number of articles in Rediff.com on Dubey.

Other bits and pieces

Coming back to the topic, I’ve personally seen people (including me) been the butt of undergrad jokes for the following:

1) Not copying in exams.
2) Attending all classes.
3) Waiting for the green light to appear in a traffic signal.

The point is: it sucks to be 'proper', even if you incline a wee bit towards that side. You might tolerate all jokes, but it’s most painful when you have to be ashamed for being honest. That’s what happens when you are outnumbered by one too many.

Again, a quote from Rediff that appeared while covering Dubey's case: “This is a clear signal to everyone that honesty in India has only one result -- failure. An honest citizen must be prepared to forfeit one's life.”

Now, would Manju’s story alter the gun culture scene in states like UP/Bihar?

I can’t comment on that, but the PSUs are sure to take a beating (as if this isn’t the case) among the IIM community if pieces like these come out in the open. Because, as I said, there is zero incentive to be honest or to work with PSUs or somehow contribute to the country, unless people like these are glorified.

Please sign up the petition here: http://www.petitiononline.com/manju005/