Monday, November 27, 2006

Few words on 'Manjunath Shanmugam Trust'

I was reading this post of Ashish Kumar (founder- Tekriti Software) on his blog. This is about - Manjunath Shanmugam, an IIM Lucknow graduate and a Indian Oil employee, who was murdered by a dealer of an Indian Oil Corporation (IOCL) for not accepting bribes and did not turn a blind eye to the adulteration of fuel being carried out by the dealer.
The aim is to spread the word on the activities taken by the Manjunath Shanmugam Trust. Ashish's blog has more information about the activities and the details are available on www.manjunathshanmugamtrust.org. The forms for the Integrity Award being offered by this trust are available here.
This murder of Manjunath was indeed sad and shocking. He paid a very high price for not accepting bribe.
In our daily lives, in our day-to-day dealings with many governmrnt offices, if not all, haven't we all come across officials to whom we have to pay bribe to get even small work done ? And how many times do we have the courage, resources, spirit, time or will to fight againt it, and not pay the bribe and get the work done? Even if we feel angry about it, even if we speak a lot among our friends and family about it, but do we really take any step towards stopping it ? When we are in need to get a certain work done, we go ahead and pay the bribe and get the work done. It is good to see the initiative being taken by trusts like 'Manjunath Shanmugam Trust'.

Talking about bribe, it was surprising to see that even enquiries for Passport are based on bribe and is commonly prevalent. I have personally faced it and the consequences of NOT willing to pay the bribe for the police verification even when I had all the correct and complete documents and certificates with me. But more about some of my experiences in my next post.

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