Whistle-blower In India Uses A Blog For Protection

BLOGS RULE!
This is a true story of an honest civil servant's travails in India's corrupt officialdom. Despite democratic institutions being firmly in place with the required checks and balances, India's state governments almost without exception are said to be extremely corrupted. From politicians to civil servants, they would make the shenanigans of our Malaysian crooks seem like child's play.

Moreover, unlike here, the honest public servant in India is probably looked upon as a curse and danger and therefore is often punished with repeated transfers and 'hardship' postings. There have also been cases where particularly 'difficult' officials have been executed/murdered/bumped off for exposing cases of rampant corruption.

The whistle-blowing official in this report, Vijayakumar, had filed about 25 formal complaints detailing specific instances of corruption to the highest-ranking civil servant in Karnataka state, which includes the technology hub of Bangalore. He said his complaints were rarely heeded.

Given these circumstances and realizing the grave danger facing her honest bureaucrat husband, the apprehensive wife devised an unusual ploy to protect him: She BLOGGED. To quote her, "we're creating a fortress around him - a fortress of people. I wanted to inform the people that this is happening, that my husband is a whistle-blower, so that it becomes the responsibility of every citizen to protect him."

She built her Web site, Fight Corruption Now with help from her son, a doctorate student in computer science at Delaware State University. On the site she chronicles her husband's case and criticizes the government. An aficionado of India's new right-to-information laws, she has acquired and uploaded reams of documents. She updates the site nearly every day and has received responses from around the world, including many from Indian émigrés who say they left the country because they found it too corrupt. Government officials in predicaments like her husband's have sought advice.

If such a website were to be set up by a government whistle-blower's wife here, our info-dictator Zainuddin Maidin would probably have a fit! But it looks like blogging is one weapon the ordinary Joe now has, for not only exposing government corruption and wrongdoing but also as protection against government sponsored/inspired harassment or worse.

You can read the full report on the power of the blog HERE.
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