National Ethics Emergency in Transparent India (NEETI)

National Ethics Emergency in Transparent India

NEETI

Everyone talks about ethics in India. Ethics for the individual, couple, family, friends, community, groups and organizations, businesses, governments and even the saffron clad holy men.

Indians talk, lecture, write extensively, preach and debate on the topic of ethics, with variants of morals (neeti), dharma and pontificate of the personal and societal dilemma around these ideals.

Social media has given birth to a monster. Social media and anything of ethical ideals always become a paradox, like oil and water. You can’t dare say both in the same breath.

In any social organization, be it a government or business, temple or school, or almost any of any size, shape and color, we have a multitude of ways to communicate with our constituents, but this is proving to be a double edge "digital sword."

Ethical dilemmas and issues raised by the social media seem to shake the foundation of transparency and accountability in business and government, albeit in different ways; challenges the authenticity of the saffron robe, or other colors and designs of the robe in different religions.

Social media tricks all of us to forget the difference between private versus shared in public; tempts us to share secrets with friends and strangers, and contradictorily to exaggerate or even lie about us, others and information. The only thing common between “private” and “public” are two letters P and I, where I represents us.

Did you know that all tweets are archived in the Library of Congress? Facebook is one of many social media in which we confide, promptly report many happenings in our day, tweet or “bark” aimlessly, take more photos of ourselves and instantly share than the number of times we look at a mirror in a day, eagerly read about blabbering of friends and strangers. First time in the history of human beings, we all seem to have more friends than we ever seen or really known, compared to those with the people we have met face to face. It is very interesting that it is called “Face” book, in which we don’t seems to care whether we have seen them face to face. I should probably create a company called “Face2Face” just to get people back into the habit of seeing and meeting face to face.

We probably type more than we talk; we all want to “talk” – meaning actually only type – more than we listen – meaning read words typed by others!

Have you noticed that famous people only talk – meaning type on face book or tweet – and have no interest in giving you access to talk back to them? Do you think a politician, a film, TV or sports celebrity or a person with million / billion dollar has any desire to listen to their constituents or fans? It may all happen these people had million ears or eyes. When millions in the crowd talk or the fans talk – meaning type – they listen to what is called “big data sentiment analysis and summary”. They do not know what each in the millions are talking, they only know what the “masses” are saying.