Our Indian traditions always said that your life is your own “karma”. This statement has a very far reaching consequence in the fact that you are what you practice in your life. In this context living a life with integrity is a necessity rather than “just a way of life”. This brings us to the next question “what is integrity”. According to Oxford dictionary integrity is “the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles”. But for me, integrity is being always conscious of your actions as well as its results and acting out in a way which is for the greater good of people around you including yourself. This world is full of choices on which you are never answerable to anyone. During those choices you can choose to act with integrity only if you are conscious of how these choices will affect you and others around you.
To understand this principle let us take an example of academic integrity which all of us would definitely have violated at least once in our lives. From my own experience, simple things like doing our own homework, not cheating on your home tests are generally looked down many a times by our peers. Students are never conscious that these habits will carry on with them through their lives which can have disastrous effect in the future as they will never develop a habit of perseverance. Although, there are some who mend their ways but time once lost never returns. Children should be made conscious of importance of integrity early on in their lives. This will help them to take full responsibility of their actions and correct them rather than running from its consequences. These people will be fit to take on the roles of future leaders rather than managers (as we see today everywhere) and will not only lead people to prosperity but will also produce the next generation of leaders by their inspiration or by their way of living.
Our reluctance to follow a life of integrity stems from our experience that dishonest people live a prosperous life. All around us we witness dishonest businessmen, politicians, doctors prospering while people with integrity suffering at their hands. But I will beg to differ. Acharya Chanakya needs no introduction. It is said that once a Chinese traveller came to meet Chanakya in his home. Since it was dusk, Acharya Chanakya was working on some important documents for the kingdom under the lightening of an oil lamp. After finishing his work he extinguished the lamp he was working with and lit another lamp to converse with his friend. When the friend questioned him he replied that the money for the lamp came from the national treasury and it is for doing official work only. Since, conversing with his friend is his personal affair he cannot use this lamp. Rather he will use his personal lamp. His life is full of such stories in which he shows exemplary integrity. The same person also says that deceiving someone is like a poison. It feels tasty initially but in the end it will take everything from you. If a person as exalted and successful as Chanakya says such words then all of us should at least think about this personal bias against integrity.
Let us understand the role of integrity in the functioning of society. There is a concept called “One for all and all for one” which means that everything is connected and an individual is a part of the mechanism called the world. An individual is like a cog in a wheel but still the smooth functioning of the wheel is depended on the cog. So, dishonest action by even a single individual can put the whole society into jeopardy and since an individual is a part and parcel of the society it in turn affects him. There is a famous scandal involving Satyam Computers Services Ltd. A scam of Rs 7000 crores was found in the accounts of one of the fortune 500 companies which shook the base of the company. It also put around 50,000 of its employees on the verge of losing their employment. Ultimately, Satyam founders, ex-CFO, ex-Vice-President of Finance along with others were booked for criminal offense and the company was saved due to timely intervention of government. This incident shows two sides of coin about how lack of integrity on part of leaders of a well established company led to its demise and how the timely intervention by government employee with integrity saved the jobs of around 50,000 employees during the time of recession.
Lastly let us talk about conflicts in integrity. Many a times it can happen that people act in their own theory of what integrity is. For example : Let us say that one of your friends was seriously ill and he could not do his homework. Hence, he comes to you and ask you to do it on his behalf. While some people can take on this job on ground of integrity while some people don’t. In my view a person should always be conscious of his action and remember that that person will never learn if he don’t work on it himself even if it is incomplete. Also it will encourage that person to outsource his problems to others which will be decremental to him in the future. On account of those two consideration in my view such requests should be refused. I will like to point out that consciousness and integrity should go hand in hand to create a better future. We can conclude that integrity is an essential part of life not just “the way of life”.
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