In the last few days there has been one movement that has captured the imagination of the common man in India and forced him to get up and make an impact in the fight against corruption. In a nation of forgetful people it has finally made us Indians say ‘Ab bahut ho gaya.’ Anna Hazare has succeeded in doing what a thousand patriotic movies and countless political parties could not do – make us take responsibility for our nation’s pitiable situation.
As I intensely watched the minute-by-minute broadcast I questioned myself about Annaji’s intentions. Was his fight limited only to getting the Lokpal bill passed in a form that could help punish the guilty? Maybe I am reading too much between the lines but I think that the real fight was for transparency and the right to information. After all, all scams happen in the darkness of misinformation.
So now the question arises how do we build transparency? The obvious answer would be to build a system of checks and balances. But aren’t checks and balances only as good as the people that manage them? Hmm… the mystery deepens. Maybe a set of people with strong integrity and no related biases can be the keepers of this system of checks and balances. The more detached an entity is from the system, the more its ability to make unbiased decisions.
However this whole idea of transparency cannot be limited to the political and bureaucratic arena. This idea needs to percolate deeper into our society and to become part of our professional and personal lives. In today’s fast paced life people want to achieve everything in a short period of time, by hook or by crook. The thought that a person can get away with anything needs to be changed and a fear of the system needs to be inculcated.
The reason people resort to cheating or lying is because they see others do the same and get away with it. The easiest way to instill a principle is to make it a law. In the sphere of work, transparency starts at the hiring process. It can be achieved by:
- Carrying out in-depth background checks on new hires. A clean record talks volumes about the candidate’s attitude and beliefs.
- Hiring a third party employee verification service provider to conduct background checks. This will allow for unbiased report and permit better judgment making.
- Implementing a system of checks and balance by decentralizing the hiring process. The final say in hiring a person should not be the domain of a single employee.
- Maintaining an employee profile section within the company’s website and outlining the past professional and educational qualifications of all the employees. This will provide an additional layer of transparency.
We are constantly influenced by the world around us. If every company implements an in-depth background check system and is able to weed out undeserving candidates from the hiring process then it will develop a sense of fear, for the system, in the hearts and mind of the job applicants.
Job applicants will have to be righteous while applying for jobs not because they want to be but because they have to be. As a person becomes honest in his professional life, the same quality of transparency and integrity are passed onto his personal life. Hence allowing us to break the vicious circle of deceit and corruption, once and for all.
