Corruption a hurdle in the path of development speech

Good morning everyone present here. I stand in front of you
to speak on the topic ' Corruption--A Hurdle in the Path of Development '. Einstein
quite rightly said, “The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by
those who watch them without doing anything.” India is a developing country
facing many challenges. Corruption is the most detrimental of them. India was
placed at 76th position out of 168 countries with a score of 38 out of a
possible 100 in Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index 2015.

I strongly believe corruption is like a canker to the health
of the economic and technological prosperity of a nation. Corruption became
rampant with the winning of freedom. Owing to the fallible democratic system
and lack of stringent punishment mechanism for the culprits, it thrived, more
in politics, government administration departments. Gradually its nexus became
more nefarious. Corruption in India spread as a result of the connection
between bureaucrats, politicians and criminals.

Political corruption is worst in
India. The major cause of concern is that corruption is weakening the political
body and damaging the supreme importance of the law governing the society. In
the past few decades there was every conceivable scam and scandals in all key
ministries. These cams and scandals tarnished the image of the country
nationally as well as internationally. There were so many scams that people
lost complete trust in the government.  Indian
Coal Allocation Scam, 2G Spectrum Scam, Commonwealth Games Scam, Telgi Scam, Satyam
Scam, Bofors Scam, the Fodder Scam, etc, are some of the many scams that were
done by elected ministers, politicians, bureaucrats, and high government
officials. The Indian Law system is so incompetent and vulnerable, that in most
of the scams, no politician, bureaucrat, high government officials were
punished.

Owing to these scams and
scandals national wealth worth billions of rupees was wasted. The burden of
this entire loss was borne by the people of India whose hard earned money was
thus wasted by these corrupt government officials, bureaucrats and politicians.
If the whopping amount of national wealth that was wasted, misused, and
misappropriated in these scams and scandals, had been spent on creating the
infrastructure in the country, it would have given the much required impetus to
the pace of the developmental progress of the nation.

Now the most crucial question:
‘How to curb this evil of corruption?’ Although many anti-corruption agencies
have been created to fight curb corruption, but they exist in name only. The
only solution to the problem of corruption is people’s involvement in
eradicating it from the face of our country. They will have to take the issue
in their hands. The French Revolution and the Russian Revolutions stand as
perfect examples which show when the people of a country unite against an
oppressive evil, how the evil just vanishes. Since they are the losers in all
the scams and scandals, as the money wasted and misused is their tax money,
they have the right to curb scams and scandals. There must be large scale
protests by the people against scams and ill practices.

The people must play a more
proactive role in curbing corruption. The corruption has grown to such a big
problem only, because we, the people have condoned these scams and scandals. If
the people of India had protested against these scams initially, and demanded
explanation from the government, these scandals would have been nipped in the
bud. However, they did not take it seriously. Now, the time has come when they
must unite against this evil, and launch a campaign to make India corruption
free.

Secondly, if a nation is to
achieve invincible prosperity in the fields of health, finances, science,
technology, and innovation, the people of that nation must adopt the principle
of integrity as it is a divine quality; it augments energy, enthusiasm, creativity,
fearlessness, purposefulness, and accomplishment. Applying integrity even in
the minutest details, they must persevere in the fields above mentioned. The
prosperity will certainly follow. So develop in yourself integrity, with all
your heart, body, and mind!