Ethics Crisis

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.