Incentive or Bribery

By: Prem Prasad Sigdel

It is quite difficult to make the labors work as they are necessary for the work and their habit of cheating. Nobody can understand and there is no boundary which work is more fit to which situation. Since it is in the hand of the worker, they are the manager to handle the work. We can’t understand their heart neither can we work ourselves. Ultimately, it is the human subject that we have to deal with. The workers seem busy and nobody can question what they have been doing. Finally, the work should have been completed on time whether it is meaningful or meaningless.

It is quite difficult for the manual worker to engage regularly. Unless we don’t press them they would try to escape from the work. If we press more, they would escape from the duty. There is controversy with the use of pressure on the workers. Sometimes it may be positive; sometimes it may be regressive. If they have escaped from the duty, the work won’t be completed on time. They have the habit of deferring though the supervisor would supervise them regularly. The single effort of the supervisor is also not so fruitful unless the workers don’t follow duty properly. It’s quite difficult to identify the key.

On the one hand, we should pursue the time and we should encourage the worker for the work. On the other hand, we can’t make them work; nor can we suspend them from the work as time constrain. The only way is to complete work on time is to make the human subject happy with the incentives. If we think otherwise it is a kind of bribery. The controversy of incentive and the bribery is quite mysterious.

The situation happened in our institution where I proposed to give some incentives to the workers. According to the proposal, they would be called in the morning and the company would offer them meal to them. It made me think twice. What can I call the incentive given to them? Is it incentive or bribery? Unless we don’t pay them the work would be late; but we need to complete the work on time. If the work hasn’t been completed on time, there would be other problem. If we don’t pay them extra, they won’t work duly and fast. What can I call the money paid to them? I am in confusion.

The incentive is given to the worker to make them more active and to concentrate on their work. It is one of the ways to complete work on time. On the other hand, we have been bribing them. What is right or wrong? There are different possibilities that we have to think. If we complete work on time, it has positive result. The completed work can have better outcome than the money we have paid. On the other hand, it is a kind of bribery that we have done.

After all, I would like to call it as bribery but it is a different way to pay for the workers. The workers have been given salary still we have paid them again. If we pay again to them it is an illegal amount. Scholars have tried to find the difference between incentive and bribery. Whether they are synonyms or antonyms I can’t understand. It may be ethical but the payment it illegal. Since they have been given the duty, it should have been completed on time. The context is like two edged weapon thus I am indecisive. The words are quite different yet coincide each other.

The situation is confusing, ethical, illegal, controversy, yet real from my side. I am in confusion regarding incentives and bribery; ethical from the side of the completion of work on time; controversy due to the legality or illegality; illegal due to the illicit payment; real as it has been paid to complete on time. However, the payment is illicit; yet it is compulsory to run with the time. Our culture has been set in such a way that the workers would expect money from other ways.

Finally, we can say that the work which has been done by the authoritarian is legal; whereas it is illegal when it is done by the commoner. The same context can be seen with the debate of incentives or bribery. The developed countries call it as incentive or overtime allowance; we would call it as bribery as we have to move with limited resources.