Friday, December 3, 2010

Scale Or Intent


I am looking to buy a new car, and i am discussiing various nuances(technical/financial) with my friends.
One of my friends is in DRDO and he has recently bought a car.

I asked him for his opinion as to his experience with the model that he bought.
He told me  that the car is realy good and he had bought this car from the CSD..
Canteen Store Department is the army canteen and you really do get a handsome discount on your stuff.
He asked wether i also want to get it through CSD.

As the difference in amount was 40-50 k,
i agreed to it.
That same evening i told my fiancee about it and she also agreed to it.
I told my parents ,they also agreed to it.

In the evening i was watching some news channel and they were discussing the
Adarsh Society Scam.

The society was meant for the Widows of Kargil war Martyrs but was being used by some other influential people.It was(is) a painful news.
I really cursed the people behind it.

In next few moments...
A kind of analogy dawned on me.

Getting a car through CSD is almost similar to getting a flat in Adarsh Society.
Neither of the parties deserve what they are availing..

and moreover me ,my fiancee and my parents
were not even aware of the contribution that we were making to corruption
....the scale was really small i think.

What is 40k in front of 1000s of crores.

but is Corruption defined on SCALE or on INTENT?



7 comments:

Chandan joshi said...

yeah sir ...Corruption is Intent..

DynaMECH said...

Farak to hai Dude... flats in Adarsh Society were limited and came up once in like 60 years... CSD supplies are not so short... u put a demand, they procure it... atleast thats how it works in Automobiles... baaki U r wise enough...lemme know what u finally do :)

Anonymous said...

What about the Merit-cum-means scholarships of Govt of India which were seldom earned on merit, and always on fake income certificates and then spent on throwing booze parties at Devbhumi n' HHH?

Anonymous said...

n' yes, it's about intent primarily.. always n' secondarily about scale!

Gaurav Vashist said...

"Always program to abstractions,never to concrete classes."

Similarly this blog is written for abstraction...any concrete implementation can be referenced. :)

Gaurav Vashist said...

Do i put a demand on my name or on a name of a relative who is serving the Forces?

I think it is the latter.
and if that is the case i don't deserve that discount and it is surely my contribution to Corruption.

What i do should be immaterial to others..as i don't think any of my readers have any gain in mine being more virtuous or less virtuous.

i think each one of us can decide for ourselves..intent pe jana hai ya justify karna hai CSD se procurement ko.

:)

spectre said...

My father is an ex-army officer. Over the years, he has bought each of his subsequent cars without CSD involvement (because of paperwork and delays which he thought was not worth the money it saved).

Manu (our NITH Mechie in DRDO) didn't buy his motorbike via CSD because of the same reason. And also because the newer version was not available via CSD.

On the other hand, a close relative of ours bought his car via CSD (obviously, because he wants to save a few thousands). My father had to do the paperwork for him because he couldn't exactly 'refuse' this relative, right?

Pretty darn ironic, if you ask me.

At its base, this CSD thing is not actually about corruption. It is just about wanting to save a few thousands badly enough to make somebody work for you while losing his own right to buy a car for a few years. Which is sort of the 'cheap' thing to do, which one should avoid.

Yes, AFAIK, buying a car through CSD also means you cannot buy another one thro CSD for some years (3, I think). This sort of keeps the 'corruption' in check.