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India achieves Six Sigma !





Of course, it isn't news.


But it's the truth. Isn't it ? Most commonly we say, it is the system. Well, more recently, we have gained an understanding that we are the system.
We know that we are born paying bribes (think about the pregnant woman in the gaon who wanted to get admission in the government hospital for her delivery) and die paying bribes (dont forget the guy who sits at the cemetery who helps with the death certificates, and God forbid, if you are a special case in any way.)


So what can be defined as corruption. In the above cases it was very straight forward to identify, but there can be vague instances as well. A businessman, who is a bank customer giving sweets on festivals to bank employees, expecting  on the side, fast service, when the need arises. Some might want to call this good will, but make no mistake. This is corruption.


So what exactly is corruption : When entity1 gives something extra to the entity2 for getting something in return which is not deserved by the entity1 is corruption.


While the Lokpal bill presents an interesting solution, there are a couple of perspective it addresses partially.


The culture perspective.
First, the culture. What is culture ? A mix of definitions tells us, culture is shared values, symbols, behavior, goals. All items representing a particular, generally distinguishing cultivation of mind.


So is corruption part of our current culture. It would seem so. The current aspiration is money, regardless of the path traversed. Look at the behavior we encourage. We would rather 'pay' to get our 'work done', then put an additional effort. And even if you attempt to put such additional effort, in most cases you will be encouraged by people around you to just get the 'work done' by 'paying' rather than wasting time.


which is what brings me to the second perspective, the reward perspective.
Organizational behavior studies clearly show us that individuals in organisations (and yes countries are also types of organisations), will pursue those behavior that get rewarded. Clearly corruption is rewarding, both for the giver and receiver. However, it is not so simple. It is not just the reward, but the trade off decision which is important.




So where did Six-Sigma come from:
Simply put, we have less than 6 corrupt transactions being prosecuted for every million such transactions. Isnt that something !! We must definitely all be aligned to this cause, otherwise how would this be possible ?
Wonder why we insist on shaming the politicians; Statistically, in this case, they are doing exactly what we the people are doing. Or is it the other way around.  जसा राजा तशी प्रजा ??






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