Stand in Favour of Corruption

One citizen in particular that thrives due to the corrupt system is Asha Waghekar. Asha comes from a childhood of rural poverty, and when she sees the opportunity to become part of the middle class, she takes it. However, this route is not the most noble of routes. She turns to political corruption in order to come out on top, and hopefully someday become Slumlord. Asha starts down her path of corruption, when she decides to start helping her neighbors solve their problems. She believes that “when she ha[s] real control over the slum, she could create problems in order to fix them … she’d learned [this] by studying the Corporator” (20). Asha’s way of thinking allows her to not only overcome the corruption in Annawadi, but become entrenched in it. She sees the good in this, because it allows her to skip all of the usual steps to make money. She is also able to reason it to herself, she states “[h]ow can anyone say I am doing wrong when the big people did all the papers—when the big people say that it’s right?” (228). Some people are able to reason corruption, in order to allow them to feel okay with it and Asha is one of those people. Fortunately for Asha, she is able to become one of the most powerful people in Annawadi. Therefore, Asha is able to use corruption to allow her to get ahead and take advantage of powerless individuals. Corruption is able to improve the lives of the

The Progress movement or as many refer to as the Progressive era, was a time frame where Americans joined in varying groups to advocate reform across the United States. To elaborate, Progressives believed in widespread change for child labor, industrialization, government, racial reform, and women’s rights. Countless stories of corruption in these areas were brought to light in the Progressive era mostly due to the published writings of Muckrakers. Muckrakers, were journalists who wrote for popular magazines that attempted to expose corrupt political activities from their investigative journalism. Furthermore, I will discuss and compare these groups and their attempts for changes in the rights of child labor, women, acknowledgment of corrupt government practices, racial relations, and industrialization reform.

Someone who is abusing the power that is given to him or her defines corruption, however, the word in its self is more than a simple idea; it is an intricate network. Since people’s views about ethical and moral behavior affect the way corruption is examined, the word has a slightly different meaning to each person. Additionally, misconduct across various societies is viewed differently due to social and cultural borders. The criminal justice system has had many instances where corruption had affected the outcome of a case and has inserted itself into the legal process.

Humans can be too selfish, and by the time they realize how situations can emerge in their contrary, out of nowhere already a giant incident has occurred. An example of this selfishness is presented when the people have “high levels of corruption in both the garment

Studies from Perez and Moore (2012) indicates that “The police were considered to be governmental agents who regularly abused their power, who often operated against the very principle of justice for they ostensibly stood, and who were not intelligent enough to grasp these realities” (p. 3). Police ethics is an important aspect of today’s professional police force. In the early days of policing in the United States, the phrase police ethics were indistinct and to countless Americans it was rather a joke. Police officers had a long history of being unintelligent, uneducated and incompetent.

Upton Sinclair’s book the Jungle  was about a Latvian family who decided to immigrate to America. They believed that America was a place to go and build wealth and thrive. When they arrive, they quickly realize that the great America is not all it’s described to be. The men in power are corrupt, the living conditions are deplorable, the area is overpopulated and there weren’t enough jobs for everyone. The jobs that were available were hard, and the factories were filthy. People often became ill and did not have enough money for doctors because they were underpaid. Sinclair wrote this book to open the eyes of the American public, and to finally incite change for the poverty stricken immigrants.

In The Crucible, by Arthur Miller, the Salem court gradually transformed from its original judicial goals to corruption, which strengthened Miller’s argument of the susceptibility of legal systems to ungodliness. Since Miller was suddenly listed as a sinner due to an accusation, he wrote this play as a commentary to the Puritan society and the corruption of officials. Situational irony was heavily utilized to contrast the original goals of a just theocracy to the resulting court corruption. In the beginning, the court strived to achieve equity and fairly punish sinners. However, the court then used the concept of “devil” to manipulate anyone

The book Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo, addresses the corruption of a slum in India called Annawadi. Annawadi is a small, poor area in the shadows of luxurious hotels and an airport near Mumbai. The poor community struggles to make a living and hold on to a hope of one day reaching success since India is improving economically. As India is improving economically, Annawadi seems to stay the same because of the people who abuse their power and take money from the poor. People there are being held back by the unfairness that they will not be able to have a better life. Laws are not enforced in poor communities because it causes corruption in both the establishment and in the people.

Katherine Boo, a staff writer at The New Yorker and former reporter and editor at The Washington Post, has worked for over two decades “reporting within poor communities, considering how societies distribute opportunity and how individuals get out of poverty” (Boo 257). In November 2007, she and her husband, an Indian citizen, moved from the United States to India to study a group of slum dwellers in Annawadi, Mumbai (Boo 249). While studying this group of individuals in India from 2007 to 2011, Boo’s goal was to learn why the individuals within this slum have not banded together against a common enemy in order to gain upward mobility. She illustrates several common issues of developing nations including: corruption, education, the mismanagement of foreign aid, and the possibility for social mobility in her book, Behind the Beautiful Forevers. In this literary work, Boo accurately portrays the acts of corruption and as well as how corruption has entered the sphere of education, which is typically an individual’s only avenue to social mobility and success in that area. She argues that instead of rising up against a higher power, the individuals within the slum fight against one another to get a leg up on their competition, even if it keeps them in the same social class.

A main theme of this book is corruption, which is extremely present in not only the policemen, but in the hospitals as well. The authorities and workers who were more fortunate than those who live

The purpose of the paper that I am writing is to reveal accounts of excuses and justifications within motive talks basing exposure on any and all delinquent behaviors that politicians or those yet to attain power. Forgetting who it was that got them elected to begin with, indulgences in uncanny behaviors, there are those who are seen as wholly incompetent of being human let alone be in positions of power. These accounts are more than recent ranging from May 2015 to March 2016, showcasing how not all those who have been elected by the people with their false promises did not deserve the support they got. Able to blatantly disregard all rules, laws, regulations bending the law just to accommodate themselves, where anyone else would normally be prosecuted. Three accounts analyzing articles will be developed upon in this paper the first, condemning the condemner, the second, appeal to higher loyalty, and lastly, scapegoating. Each of these accounts is directly represented by their respective articles and how power absentmindedly leads to corruption.

The unlawful use of a person’s position while in power leads to multiple problems with today’s government. The corrupt methods politicians use are ideas that are strictly in place for personal gain. Present throughout history and still prevalent within today’s world, government corruption has consisted of a number of negative issues including bribery, economic and social impacts, and the misuse of power. Government’s role within daily life has been shown to have negative effects as seen in many aspects of life as well as in literature.

(Corruption defined causes, effects and means of combating it, 2003, Judge Dr. Rahim Hassan Ugaili,)

Political corruption is parasitic; it finds a host, and can almost always find a way to survive. Eventually, people grow dependent on this corruption as a means for income, thus forming a symbiosis between the people who benefit from it, and the elites that regulate it. People sometimes ignore the corruption surrounding them, feeling that as long as the politicians do their jobs well, their ‘extra salary’ can’t hurt (BNS).

Corruption is a complex political, social, and economic anomaly that negatively affects developing and developed countries. It weakens democratic institutions, holds economic development, widening the rich-poor gap and certainly leads to governmental instability. The World Bank definition of corruption states that “…the abuse of public office for private gain”.