Faking news: It’s safe to take bribes again, feel corrupt

After lying low for several months as the mood of the nation was strictly against corruption and fraud, dishonest bureaucrats and politicians have concluded that coast is clear now and they could start asking for bribes without attracting public outrage.

“Corruption has won again, almost,” a corrupt official told Faking News on condition of anonymity. When asked how he could be so sure when he preferred anonymity in the public life, the official said that anonymity had nothing to do with validity of an assertion.

“Everyone who leaked information to WikiLeaks was anonymous, right?” he argued. “And all those ‘sources’ that your journalists mention all day long are always anonymous. So let’s not argue over that,” he said.

These officials, most of whom are middle-level government employees, have decided to go back to the good old days when they could ask for bribes without feeling awkward.

“Not that small fish like us were netted by the investigating agencies, but we, as part of this society, felt a bit embarrassed asking for bribe when everyone was speaking against corruption,” said an upper division clerk in a nationalised bank.

“But times have changed, people have adjusted and corruption has survived,” he said.

“In fact, corruption has adjusted and people have survived,” he added as an afterthought. “People would now adjust corruption in their lives as they will try to buy LPG cylinders from the black market and survive inflation.”

The corrupt officials further claim that the nation has “moved on” from corruption, thanks mainly to those who were supposed to be fighting and exposing it.

“CAG reports overemphasized calculating presumptive losses, hence people never really saw the real scam – the bending of rules and arbitrariness of policy decisions,” an official in the coal ministry claimed. “It became more like people discussing Sachin’s number of hundreds, but no one discussing his form.”

“And then there was this Team Anna,” the official could barely control his laughter.

“They are fighting over Facebook pages while we turn a new page in our lives,” he added, with a chuckle.

Disclosure: 10,000 rupees, in cash and unaccounted, was paid to anonymous corrupt people quoted in this report to come up with truth.

Rahul Roushan thinks he can make some sense through nonsense. He attempts the same through his news satire website www.fakingnews.com