Renowned journalist Fareed Zakaria who was initially suspended for lifting a passage from a rival magazine’s article has been reinstated by his employers. However, for a while Zakaria was haunted by the word plagiarism despite his apology. When a writer of much repute almost verbatim reproduces content without attribution, can it be just a case of oversight or sheer foolishness?

The Internet has made borrowing content extremely easy, but it has also made getting busted that much easier.
Plagiarism, business fraud and con jobs find their roots in the very basic need to deceive. A random piece of copying can be justified as circumstantial but one cannot deny that the justification is, in a way, an acknowledgement of a deceitful act. Why has deceit become such an accepted part of our personalities? Are we taking our infamous chalta hai attitude too far?

Root in Mythology

When Krishna asked Yudhisthira to kill Ashwatthama the elephant, he knew the subsequent deception would pay off. Dronacharya, the royal military leader of the Kauravas in the Kurukshetra War, believing that it was Ashwatthama, his son, who was slain, laid down his arms. The virtuous Yudhisthira technically did not lie — he did kill an Ashwatthama; Drona didn’t hear the Pandava scion’s whole sentence, and Krishna ensured that the rival military head honcho stepped down.
The Trojan Horse, an alleged gift from the Greeks to the citizens of Troy, has become the ultimate symbol of deceit. Trickery, as a form of war strategy, has been espoused by the sharpest of minds since time immemorial. Radhakrishnan Pillai, corporate guru, author of Corporate Chanakya and social commentator, feels the context is critical. Merely harping on deceit is hardly the issue, but why one would indulge in it needs to be addressed. In today’s world though, he agrees that it’s become second nature. He says, “We constantly see how people want to take credit for their “original work” which is a myth. In Lord Krishna’s and Chanakya’s case, one has to look at their larger perspective. To the common man, it might look like their ways of going about a particular issue are wrong, but their deceit wasn’t with a selfish motive. Krishna didn’t want to inherit the kingdom nor did Chanakya. Today that larger perspective is missing. Deceit often has a selfish motive. Why just deceit? People do charity and yet claim to be very “noble” for selfish reasons.”

Dirty business

Jugaad, conceptually an Indian brainchild, is all about making the best use of what’s in hand and every Indian knows that it also extends into illegal territory. In a survey conducted by the Legatum Institute, 81 per cent of Indian businessmen attributed their success to the free-for-all concept of jugaad. B-Schools today look to India as the birthplace of jugaad, in biz jargon called frugal engineering. Jugaad is innovative thinking and companies acknowledge it for inspiring creativity. Needless to say, corruption is often a companion in out-of-the-box strategy.
Says MD and CEO of Futurebrands India Ltd, Santosh Desai, “In the larger scheme of things, jugaad did start as out-of-the-box thinking, but reduced to being used unethically and immorally in different spheres of life. Today when you see scams around you, it does show that many corporations have compromised on ethics and morals for success in numbers. The biggest problem is that people stop thinking in moral terms and start thinking in pragmatic terms. We’ve adjusted our morals according to circumstances.” Desai has written the critically acclaimed book Mother Pious Lady.

Art copies life

One look at the purpose of the website www.itwofs.com and you realise how little is truly original in our world of Bollywood and non-Bollywood music. Anu Malik was the 90s most “inspired” man, before of course Pritam came into the picture. Way before the Internet exploded even the highly gifted R.D. Burman was infamous for some blatant lifts like Milgaya humko saathi (originally Mamma Mia! by ABBA). Music apart, there have been even scene by scene copies of films (Mahesh Bhatt’s Dil Hai Ki Manta Nahin was a copy of It Happened One Night.)
The world of fashion is replete with stories of who shamelessly took their “inspiration” too far and who sued whom for eerily similar creations. Yet, a brand as popular and respected as Zara is known to have expanded its base by purely being fashion imitators. “There are brands who thrive on the business model of interpreting designs as fast as possible and they’ve been quite successful. You must also consider that nothing is really original in the creative sphere. Any artist always draws upon some idea that has inspired him. How innovatively that is used is what makes things creative,” says leading designer Narendra Kumar Ahmed.
He agrees that not just is copying incredibly rampant in India, but the process of seeking legal recourse is cumbersome too. Nari adds, “I’m resigned to the fact that copying will happen here and you really can’t do much. Unless you have the resources to chase every attempt at copying your work, plagiarism in India is fait accompli.”