The increasing greed of people, combined with a dysfunctional administrative system, are the reasons for the rampant corruption that has engulfed the country and caused tremendous losses, which have slowed down our economic growth, said former Lokayukta of Karnataka Justice (retd) N Santosh Hegde, while speaking at a discussion on ‘The Role of Indian Youth in Democracy’, organised jointly by Asian School of Business (ASB) and Young Indians (Yi) at ASB here on Thursday.
Speaking to students of ASB and Trivandrum International School, Hegde that India can be cured of the malaise of corruption that ails it only if students, the future leaders, learn and understand the true meaning of contentment. He also told them never to condone any act of corruption.
“People only seek to serve themselves today and all they want to do is make more and more money even if they cannot use it all up in their lifetime,” the former judge of the Supreme Court said, adding that it was only made worse by the silence of the society.
“You must identify values and not stray from them,” he said.
Corruption, Hegde said, was as old as civilisation itself, but the scale it has risen to owing largely to people’s greed is now having a telling effect on our economy and growth.
“The CAG reports on 2G scam, coal block allocation etc reveal how many lakhs of crores are being lost,” said Hegde. “About 51,000 crore rupees, as per the CAG report, is unaccounted for from the money allocated to various welfare schemes. For every rupee spent by the government, only 15 paise reaches the beneficiary. Where does the rest go?” Hegde asked.
G Vijayaraghavan, Member, Kerala State Planning Board and Member Secretary, ASB, and Samuel Paul, Member, Board of Governors, ASB, and former director IIM (A), also spoke on the occasion.
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