99 out of 100 officers - begin their careers to serve the country.

They have
complete disdain for dishonesty. They believe they know solutions to the ills faced
by the country. They think that the administrators before them had been somehow
handicapped or inept to solve those issues and that, now things had changed.

However, when they enter into the service and get posted in a remote rural town as
sub-divisional magistrate, they are suddenly faced with the grim realities of the
society. They suddenly see reason in the way people behave. They understand why
people, politicians, bosses and subordinates behave in the manner they do.

They see why a clerk who is paid Rs 6000 as monthly salary, would mistreat a poor
applicant and expect a bribe. They see why that poor applicant, who probably can
not afford the bribe, approaches a local politician to get his work done. They see
how that clerk would then do his work because of the threat posed by knowledge the
politician has of his past corrupt behavior. They see how the clerk would anything
for the local news stringer who also knows about all the shady transactions of the
clerk. The officer sees why nobody wants to get the clerk removed from the post
because people do not want to threaten the bread and butter of his family and they
find a workaround: sharing the bounty and sparing the powerful/extremely poor.
Everybody is happy.

Except probably for the officer - who wants the clerk to go for misuse of
authority. The officer wants to go against the societal norms ofcompassion for the
members of the society because she wants to 'improve' the system. However, she
finds it difficult to dislodge this person with connections to her bosses, local
MA/MPs, police and media.

She probably has hundreds of other such clerks to deal with, apart from truckloads
of other files to dispose, events to organise and meetings to attend. For the
officer, it becomes a very low priority issue, simply because she has no time to
fight this nexus, even if she is willing and capable.

Then after a while when such issues pile up, the officer thinks, the problem would
probably go away when the Government decides to hike the salary of the clerk. And
the drive to 'cleanse' the system goes away.

Since, all this seems logical, their motivation to change it gradually wanes.

As soon as this drive goes away, what choice does the officer think she has?

The officer finds out that she alone can not make a system level impact. She can
either be anoutlier at a small level, disliked by politicians, bosses and media or
she can take the other route.

And let me tell you, the only way you do not become a part of the problem is to not
make any friends. This is probably the most difficult part for most officers: to
suppress their urge to be social and to deal with the fact that you are themost
disliked person in 2,000 square kilometers of area and even beyond.

Nexus of Good: Did I hear you say that the public would support you? Practically,
no. One, they are completely unaware of what really is going on. Two, we need a
charismatic person to galvanise/streamline people against local
politicians/bureaucrats/media to lend their support to a just cause and to make
this supportsomewhat effective. You can not find such charisma all too often and it
is extremely hard to stand a chance against the might of the government. NGOs,
activists, other good men? One, they are not super-active at lower levels. Two,
many of these are also stakeholders in this abuse. Basically, it is far easier to
find the other kind.
Other route: With time, officer realises she can be part of a politician-
bureaucracy-media-police-corporate nexus which abuses public resources and
authority at a much larger scale. Many of us, decide to take the plunge and leave
the 'cleansing' of the system to the government or time.

Did you visit my own state? Now, you respond to my comment within the next few
hours and tell me why you think my statement is wrong. The south is infested with
feminism in red states and feminism appeasing states like Kerala and Tamil Nadu. My
own state of AP it is far less. Hell, you talk about feminism over here and you get
a butt load of criticism for being feminist. Just the way I like it. Not like
Chennai which was run by "a southern version of Didi" until very recently!