I read all the replies. i used to think of corruption in the same way until one day i talked about it with my hubby. it changed my view of looking at corruption. now i don't blame any person (the policemanor any other) for corruption but the system, its a vicious cycle. police takes money from us and they in turn have to give it to their seniors who in turn might end up giving to some political figure or a Judge or any other higher order person.
There are two ways of fighting corruption...
1.) Top to bottom: i just mentioned above the way it starts from the high ranking ppl taking money from those down the hierarchy. Hence this kind of corruption can be reduced by ppl sitting on the top.. not the ppl at grass root level.
We can't stop police from asking money from us reason being, they have to pay it to their officers and so on ... few of us can follow traffic rules but not all. I believe following rules paves way for building a Healthy society and not a way to fight corruption, though it might indirectly end up with lesser number of ppl giving bribes to police. But then think again, how will you stop corruption in Police dept by following traffic rules?
will the higher rank officers stop taking bribes just because ppl follow trafic rules? wat will happen to those policemen who have to give bribes to their seniors. they will be forced to device new ways of asking money from ppl
2.) the second kind of corruption is Bottom Up: this is where we have a role to play. It starts with us. we want to get our clerical work done not just in time but we also want unlawful things done for us. Hence we bribe. I won't say it started overnight.
This type of corruption has gradulally evolved over several decades and we got evolved with this system too. we are so used to it, its so obvious to us that we can get anything done with money in India. The sad part is we laugh when we say this. Each one of us is against corruption but ends up giving bribes to ppl whether its a clerical work in any suvidha kender or any govt office, to getting admissions in educational institutions, getting a passport/driving license/ration card/pension and the list goes on.