DailyPost 2602
BEYOND ETHICAL DILEMMAS
Any professional work, more so in public life / domain is fraught with ethical dilemmas and sorting it out in favour your conscience and simultaneously delivering of quality, on time and at the right cost, can be termed as the most successful resolution of ethical dilemma. If you able to pick up this navigation skill, you would certainly turn out to be the most relevant person for the community. An analogy of its impact would make things amply clear. Medical ethics has been at the core of the existence of the medical fraternity; meaning immense respect for them and good quality health care delivery.
The dissipation of medical ethics, more so with the coming up of an unsustainable business model in this field, made a nature of dent to the profession, which no once could have imagined two decades back. Healthcare on an already decided business model does not work. Business model has to come out of the healthcare being delivered. Whether corporatization of health care and *crash commercialization of pharma industry has brought us this pass, I would leave it for the readers to decide. The moral of the story is that ethical dilemmas have completely been wiped out and clear cut non-ethical route seems to be the forgone conclusion. Even worse is the situation is public life.
Public life can be termed as the sum total of all democratic stakeholders; political class, political executive, executive, media, social activists and extending it further to the civil society. What are the ethical dilemmas they face and how do they sort it out? Or have the vast majority reached a stage of post ethical dilemma. Ethical dilemmas have ceased to exist for them. For them the diktat; written, oral or even the understanding of it, of the organisation, institution or the ecosystem is fine. Ethical or otherwise, they would not give a wandering thought. Their interests need to the served. The effort is to redefine ethics as per your convenience and align as much as possible of the democratic world with it. The beauty of this game is that the gullible and the upwardly mobile are happy to become active players, for vested interests.
The transformation of ethics to the sidewalks of public life has been the most commendable achievement of Indian democracy. We have reached a stage where the process and decisions of ethics committee are being termed as unethical. Justice works on the dictum; that it should be done and it should also seem to be done. How hollow does it sound in the public life of today’s India; political parties, executive and media all in the dock. Corruption and loss of character are accepted as the new normal. Turning a blind eye to the burning problems of the worst kind are all fine, as long as you can get away with it. The numbing of the population to loss of ethics is biggest success ethics detractors and the so-called practical practitioners of the day have achieved. The truism reverberates all over; all is fair in love, war and politics. We can add public life and governance to it.
AS THINGS STAND TODAY, BEING ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF ETHICS IS BEING ON WRONG SIDE IN PUBLIC LIFE.
Sanjay Sahay
Have a great evening.