Sariya Thavara aka Right or Wrong

The protagonist in the tamil movie Indian (Hindustani in Hindi) steadfastly refuses to bribe and as a result indirectly causes the death of his own daughter. Obviously no sane person would do this. On the other hand, we dont go around bribing every single person we meet to achieve our objectives. Why?? We believe that the former is right and the latter is wrong though either case involves the same wrong act aka bribing. So what is the difference? Where do we draw the line?

The only difference that I can see is the objective of the action. Now that brings us to the question of whether the end result / aim of the action justifies the action, no matter what it involves. I certainly dont have an answer. There are a lot of factors that come into play here and there simply cannot be an answer here for all situations.

Whilst I was working in Soliton I had an accident. Thankfully I escaped with minimal hurt but my bike was badly damaged. I had to change the chassis of my bike. When this happens, one needs to re-register the chassis number of the bike with the RTO. Now take my word for this, dealing with government employees (the rare exceptions in govt service, please excuse me) is probably the most painful task one can ever embark on. There are a hell of a lot of procedures and you will need to run around a lot. You have to go to the RTO office / insurance office / office of the financier who funded your bike a lot of times to get things going. Now I had a great team in Soliton and they allowed me to step in and step out of the office any time I liked. So I was able to run around personally and get things done without having to pay a single paisa in the form of bribe. What could I have done if Soliton hadnt permitted me to do that or if there was some other thing that resulted in me not being able to run around?

After I had resigned from Soliton I had to shift to Chennai to take up a job in HCL. I had to re-register my bike with the RTO Chennai and had to get an NOC within 5 days from the Bangalore RTO. Had the govt mechanism been efficient I could have got it done. We all know how the RTO office functions and hence to get the job done in 5 days, I had to bribe someone. I really couldnt bring myelf to actually diong the act of bribing someone and hence I got an agent to obtain the NOC. The agent is also going to pay commision to the RTO folks. So, indirectly I am a party to a wrong act. Not doing the actual act does not absolve me of guilt as I was the trigger for the act. But I had only 5 days to get the NOC. So the only option left to me was to go to the agent. Now is this wrong? Having given homilies to many people on the importance of being upright and straight forward, what have I done now? Isnt this hypocisy at its best?

There are a lot of such things that we come across in our everyday acts. Another common example is when students aspiring to study abroad get financial statements from agents. American universities expect the applicants to show cash reserves of close to Rs.20 lakhs which is simply not possible for the vast majority of Indians. Only NRIs and the extremely rich would have such resources. Even many of the upper middle class people might not have so much cash resources. All their resources will probably be in the form of property. So what do the aspiring students do? Do they have to abandon their hopes of higher studies for the sake of not doing anything wrong. They simply get the job done from an agent. Is this right? Does the end justify the means?

After thinking about this for a long time I came to the conclusion that I am incapable of deciding on this and hence I decided to take refuge behind thiruvalluvar who wrote the following in his magnum opus Thirukural

"Vaaymai ena paduvathu yaathenil, yaathonrum theemai ilatha sol"
meaning......
"The action that does not cause any harm to anyone is the right action" (meaning adapted to the context)