Worth/Price of a person:

What is the worth of a person? Can we put a price to it? We often hear people boasting I am “priceless”. Are they really? What exactly defines the worth of a person? Let me try and present my perspective here. I am not talking about earning capacity of an individual.

A traffic police catches a bike rider with some missing documents. Bike man offers 50 bucks and policeman talks rules. Bike man raises it to 100 bucks and still police does not relent. When the amount is raised to 200 bucks, policeman gives a soft warning and let go. So it takes 200 bucks for the policeman to give in. An officer in government cadre would say 200 bucks is too small amount, he might give in at 2000 bucks. A privileged official might give in at 20k bucks and people at even higher level might give in at much higher amount. So there is a price defined for every person.

Don’t get me wrong I am not talking about government official and bribe only. A auto rikshaw wala might observe that passenger has left his bag in auto. If the bag contains merely clothes, he might dutifully return the same to passenger or deposit at a police station. Will he do the same if it’s a wallet that he finds? Will he return the same if it’s a briefcase that contains a lakh?

Essentially the point is the real worth of a person is the price at which he bids good bye to the ethical standards defined. It need not be merely in monetary terms. It can be in kind or other variety of means. One fellow falls for girls other falls for exciting gadget that gets paid. One person gets scared of the power and gets rid of ethical standard. Every one has his/her own reasons to get compromised. Nevertheless that is a price for each person.

I don’t mean to say the class of individuals who don’t succumb, come what may, do not exist. They do exist. But they exist in very less quantity and they are also slowly getting extinct. Like save tiger campaign we really have a need to run a campaign to save these special individuals from getting extinct.