CC #3-Getting to the point-Everything Begins at Home

CC #3-Getting to the point-Everything Begins at Home

Good afternoon fellow toastmasters and guests. Our Independence Day is approaching. The common wealth games in Glasgow recently had 64 Indians winning medals finishing 5^th place in the world. The World Bank report says India has displaced Japan to become third largest economy in the world in terms of Purchasing power parity. The place we hold in the world is made very prominent with University of Michigan taking up “India in the world” in their curriculum to teach how well India has prospered. Despite all this, India is still a developing country.  Can anyone tell me some reasons behind this state?

Thank you all. There have always been reasons and constant complaints about the people pointing out at officials that they were not doing their responsibilities properly.

Let us now consider Mr. Ravi, a sincere official who always did his job well. He is a 12 years experienced person and there aren’t any black-marks in his entire career. He has always managed to turn deaf years to all the people who wanted to get him into wrong practices- personally and professionally.

One fine day, Mr. Ravi has an important document to be sent out to his chief so that they can decide on the company’s revenue forecast. There comes Mr. Rony- formally dressed. He portrayed every quality that a gentleman would have. (Rony is actually the friend of Balu, the person who sits next to Ravi at work)They both have a casual conversation:

Rony: Ravi, I heard that you were working on this document and it was due to sent out to the chief today?

Ravi: Yes Rony. I am putting my heart and soul to deliver this document.

Rony: That’s really good Ravi. Could you do me a favour?

Ravi: Sure, please tell me.

Rony: One of my friends is running a company. He is very sad about his company performing badly at the stocks. He even went to the state of committing suicide twice!If you can change the value from 9 crores to 7 crores in your document, he would be happy.

Ravi: Rony, this is ridiculous! I cannot do something that’s against my value!

Rony: Does your value say you can allow a person commit suicide?

Ravi: No. But….

Rony: Please Ravi. He would also give you 1 crore rupees for the favour you are doing.

Ravi: Bribe? No way!

Rony: It isn’t bribery Ravi. You are Balu’s friend. Will I let you get into trouble? This is a token of gratitude; a gift that he would give.

Ravi: Still it is bribery Rony, I wouldn’t do it.

Rony: C’mon Ravi. When you presented your wife with jewelry, was it bribe? He is my friend, which means he is your friend too. Please help him.

Ravi: Hmm…

(Ravi changes his document from 9 crores to 7 crores, gets caught in the financial review and is behind the bars for bribery)

Let us see what happened in Ravi’s childhood that made him accept that it was a GIFT like Rony had mentioned.

32 years ago-

Ravi’s mom was very happy to have given birth to a healthy boy. She wanted him to be the first in everything, like every mother.

When he learned to walk, she stood on one corner and called him “Ravi! Come to your mother” and cuddled him. Every kid is born to experience love.

Suddenly things change. Ravi is in class one when his strict father tells him, “Ravi, get first rank and I will give you a new box of Crayon”

Ravi works hard thinking about the Crayon he would get if he succeeds.

Ravi grew up and his father now says, “Ravi, get above 90% and I will get you a new bike”

Ravi works hard that he gets the bike some way or the other. He studies day and night and scores more than 90% and gets his dream bike.

Just like Ravi, most of us were fighting to conquer our own self to get the GIFT promised by our parent. Never did we think that our parents would be happy if we got the first rank, our parents would he proud if we scored above 90%.

That is when the pride for a priced article overtook love. We yearned for priced goods than priceless love. We bribe the children unknowingly that, on doing something they would get something.

Children should be thought to work for a target to reach glory, not to reach for a target to get something that money can buy. If the child succeeds, let that be celebrated with a vacation with family/friends or a party with the closed ones; but let us avoid promising gifts for an achievement. Let us make children realize that it is for their good. We aren’t avoiding celebrations any ways!

Let us eradicate the root cause for bribery.

Let us remove corruption from our country and make India a developed country.

 (Over to you TMOD)