This is a post that has been on my mind for quite a while. India's is one of the most corrupt nations in the world according to the Transparency International's index (ranked 87th). Now I do not know how it is possible to compare corruption and not having lived in other countries - cannot validate such rankings from experience. But I do happen to know that there is a lot of corruption in India, and suddenly there seems to be a spurt in the number of holier than thou individuals demanding that corruption be eradicated from India. While the thought is laudable, I get very irritated when even senior and very educated people pronounce it as 'coe-ruption' or 'कोरप्शन' with a shorter vowel sound of 'o'. The only version I am aware of, is 'cur-ruption' or 'करप्शन'. There are many people - within the media and without - who insist on using the former erroneous version. I wonder why. I would have written this post a long time ago, but for the number of people who used the incorrect variant. That made me wonder if there was indeed an acceptable variant. Over a year of sporadic Google searches, I have concluded that this is indeed an error.
The most famous votaries of the 'coe-ruption' version are Vinod Dua (award winning anchor NDTV) and Arun Jaitley (senior BJP leader and lawyer). There are many others in the media who use this variant. My request to the readers of this post is not to get swayed by the exalted status of the 'coe-ruption' brigade - and stick to the correct version. If people think that we can get rid of करप्शन (cur-ruption) by pretending that it is कोरप्शन (coe-ruption), that would be unfortunate!
A better way to get rid of corruption is to begin by getting rid of the corruption in its pronunciation.
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