Cronyism

Let me define what this word means, “When someone favors the person close to them for activities rather than those with skills and expertise”. Will the informal word ‘Cham-cha-giri’ fit anywhere near cronyism? Well that’s for you, readers to decide. One typical morning on my way to work, I had a chance encounter with this very word in action. This thought left a pretty good gray matter of mine scratched until I gathered all my nerve-inferno to pen it down here. 

Now let us reflect on how we landed up in the present job. Well most of us do come from humble backgrounds with the necessary qualification suited for our job but there are sections of working people who got their jobs through cronyism and these people still play a significant role in an office set up, after they get a job. For in my case, I underwent rigorous competition and I am here because of what I went through not to be a jobless graduate. Many an office will definitely see such people and these people are ‘special’. They know how to ‘manipulate’ the colleagues and ‘impress’ the boss. I put my thought straight-cronyism helped these people get a job. 

We choose to be what circumstances expect of us. I mean we get a job mostly because we don’t want to be jobless. Not that I wished to become what I am now since my childhood days. Come on folks, just be true to yourself! Did you wished to be what you are now? A million dollar thought perhaps. 

In a typical work place, most people work, most of us do. Well most of us do fall into the performing characters but there are a few exceptional ones. They are what I call ‘under-performers’ and the only thing they perform is the ancient art of deceiving people- gossip and lie to impress your boss. Practically the work done by such people are negligible but they create a good impression by ‘oiling the work through talks’. 

And society accepts these people by what they hold and not by what they mean, so they wish to maintain the status quo. Degeneration of profession! The very purpose of ‘towards a dynamic and efficient civil service’ is murdered brutally. My stand on this, if I get an exit, I would merrily walk out and be somebody in somebody else’s set up. And some of my senior colleagues tell me that such people shine professionally in life and they stand testimony to this fact. It’s not corruption but it definitely is something going terribly bad.

One must live through bad times and these bad times teach one to be refined. You stand witness to injustice in broad daylight and this still is cronyism. Let me steal a line from my former lecturer, “I once bit a stone in to the curry of my friends’ expression” and quick came the reply, “you shouldn’t say things (wrong doings) especially to colleagues” and yes it stirred a pretty good commotion at my work place. I shouldn’t say it! Agreed but I can bloody write it down and let the world know about it through the World Wide Web. That I can do and nobody dare stop me from doing that. 

And from this day forth, I will only write, not speak of such things. I promise my humble readers and those human beings who have some inclination for penning down thoughts.

So what for those cronies as of now? Professionally you are bound by your responsibilities and nothing can be done about it. I am beginning to be a cynical person from now on and I will hold on to what I am and not what I am told to be. After all, I know I stand right morally, ethically and professionally. 

All I can do is write about it now. This piece would remain a great deal longer than what is verbally shot. Our global community is waking up hard from the ‘economic recession’ and now we see ‘professional recession’. That too in a nation that left the world mesmerized with its GNH utopia. 

Food for thought: Cronyism is the poison of all-working-ethos