On a
usual trip like many others he was carrying a truck full of cold
drink bottles in the streets of Pune city, to be distributed to some
shops in the city. All of a sudden one of the tyres on rear left
burst and the truck listed on the left side. All the cold drink
bottles were scattered all over the road. Quite a few were still
intact. The poor fellow rushed to the nearby shops to call for some
help.
Meanwhile
a big crowed gathered around the truck. It wasn't to help the person
in problem, but to loot the unprotected goods. Yes, within minutes
all the intact bottles of cold drink were stolen by the mob. Some
people on two wheelers, who could easily afford to buy the cold
drink, were no exception. All the standards and poors were together
in the act.
Another
fine day, a super market shop lost its power supply in the late
evening hours. Due to some technical problem it took some 10 odd
minutes to start the generator and restore the lights. And when the
lights flashed, the owner was staring at a nightmare. 70-80 % of his
shop was empty. Again a mob of common shoppers looted the place.
Charging
expenses, many a times supported with fake bills or making the entry
as working hour when the person was on leave is a commonplace thing
in big corporates.
Doing
businesses of millions of rupees with black money transactions are in
daily practice of many businessmen, starting from the smallest shop
round the corner to the gigantic corporations.
Anyone
who has stood as a supervisor for examinations will have a bundle of
stories of cheating in exams. Students don't feel the urge to earn
knowledge and test themselves. Instead they are completely oriented
towards earning marks, by hook or by crook.
Each
day open any news paper or switch on any of the news channel and it
wouldn't happen that you don't hear about corruption. The scope is
starting from a bribe of a few hundred bugs taken by a traffic police
to multi billion rupees scams of topmost government officials and
ministers.
All
the cases mentioned above point out to only one thing. i.e. currently
we are in an era of ethics crisis. Though I am quoting the instances
of India, the situation isn't different in many of the
countries,including developed countries like US.
Its
the time when majority of people have no value for values and ethics.
Majority of people don't find anything wrong in breaking rules.
Things like corruption are so common that they doesn't count anymore
unless amounts are really very huge.
Indian
mythology has a very specific term for this era, i.e. Kaliyug.
And it seems that we are right in the middle of this. If we go with
this concept of Kaliyug,
then we, the human beings have came a very long way starting from
Satyayug up to this
era.
What
has changed so much along the way? We say and believe that we have
“Evolved” over the period of time. We have developed so many
machines, technology, weapons and this and that. But have we lost a
very basic thing called as satisfaction? Sometimes I feel that an
animal in jungle is wiser than humans as he knows when to stop
eating. But we, the humans have lost that sense. The extra
intelligence that hums have got as a gift is being wasted and we are
doing irreparable damages to the nature around us. These are the
consequences of nothing but the ethics crisis in the larger picture.
At
the very first we have to learn to be content to come out of this
ethics crisis. We have to open up our minds to empathize with others.
We must learn to map our every act to a genuine need and critically
differentiate it from the greed. This can take us out of this era,
and head back to the beginning of Satyayug,
as per the forecast of Indian Mythology. Sounds too theoretical and
imaginative, isn't it? Yes it is so. But I belief that dreams are
meant to be realized. Lets take a vow to meet the target of 100%
ethical behavior.
