Who's robbing you again?

What's the difference between bribing and robbing? This question came up for discussion during lunchtime when I was home last Friday. Lunchtimes are always this interesting and at times, it leads to heated debates with everybody taking sides. My grandma is often the only neutral person trying hard to control the two sides like a tired umpire.

But this one time, we were all unanimous in our views as far as the topic was concerned because we all agreed that bribing and robbing are practically the same thing. The only difference being that when the rich do it, it's called a bribe and duly legalised while when the poor do it, it isu00a0 demarcated as robbing.

Does my argument make no sense? Then look at it this way. We normally complain when our milkman adds water in the milk. We keep grumbling that the day's milk is watery andu00a0 wonder why we waste money buying it from him! We yell at the gardener if he extends his work by a day, regardless of how big the lawn is. We often forget how tiring it is to de-weed the entire garden, water it and finally sweep off the dirt. And by chance, our maid takes an onion or two tomatoes more, we get angry and I have heard people who actually keep account of the vegetables used!

We're also the type who make a big hue and cry when the traffic constable takes a 50 or a 100 note from us and lets us go without a ticket, but how many of us prefer that to paying the 300 or 500 fine? Almost all of us.

How can I ignore the infamous Auto dons of the city? These guys make a living demanding 5 or 10 extra on every journey. We throw tantrums saying its highway robbery and crib about it all day, yet, we walk into office hardly an hour later and give the office boy a 50 note to get you a meal that costs 48 and he keeps the change without telling you. Don't we look at him with suspicion that he might one day steal something from us?

Isn't this robbing? We shout out at the top of our voices to everybody that we are being robbed. I say that both robbing and bribing are two sides of the same coin. Consider this. The Police inspector got some work done and what do we do to thank him? Do we say, "thank you very much sir for the wonderful work you have done," or do we say "thank you" and hand him some money on the sly instead? Is he robbing us, no way! We call it a bribe, something like a thank you token. Or when we go to the RTO to get our license. How many of us prefer using brokers to standing in the long queues? At the end it hardly matters if we drive well or not, we eventually pass the test and get a license and are quite thrilled at having gotten it so easily.u00a0

Funny, but we willingly give these people in high chairs the same money to get our work done by bribing them but when the poor take something to fill their stomachs or take extra time because they are tired working the whole day, we say they are robbing us of our money. Are we not the biggest hypocrites ever? But then again, when weren't we? We've evolved into a society that can only live by double standards and we're content.