Whistleblowers : On The Verge Of Extinction
Can We Save Them?
Truth has always been difficult both for the listener and the speaker. We try to remain aloof to some disturbing events happening around us. Little do we care about the detrimental effects it would cause in the long run. When such incidents occur we often hear a voice that comes from within ourselves telling us:
Stay away and mind your own business. Why do you want to get into trouble?
But what makes us human is not the similarities we possess but the differences we are bestowed with.
Whistleblowers take the opposite route. What matters to them is the truth and unravelling it by any how becomes their soul aim. You might be thinking, who is a “Whistleblower”.
A whistleblower is a person, who could be an employee of a company, or a government agency, disclosing information to the public or some higher authority about any wrongdoing, which could be in the form of fraud, corruption ,etc
According to an estimate only 30 percent of employees who discover wrongdoing ever disclose them. The other 70 percent becomes silent observer,never revealing what they saw and hence giving an irreparable damage.
Origins
It’s origin dates back to 1883 when a policeman who used to alert citizens about a riot was called a whistleblower in one of the stories of Janesville Gazette. By the end of 1963 this phrase was transformed into a hyphenated one and began to be used for people who revealed wrong doings. It gradually started to evolve as a compound word “whistleblower”.
The phrase whistleblower as we use today was coined by a US civic activist Ralph Nader who tried to present in a positive way through his articles as earlier negative connotation were used such as “ informer” or “snitch”
The word basically highlights the importance of a whistle to alert people or a mass about terrible incidents happening in their company or their place of work.
Whistleblowing is done at different levels having their individual effects
- Internal whistleblower- When an individual raises voice against a fellow accomplice caught in some immoral activity. They report misconduct to a senior official such as Head Human Resource or CEO of that organisation.
- External whistleblower- Such individuals advocate their beliefs outside the organisation such as media, higher government officials or police.
World has witnessed such innumerable personalities who have the changed the course of history and saved the lives of millions of people. These people risk their life for getting out the truth from the shackles of some selfish people. It’s our moral duty to know about such heroes who live among us yet are forced to remain anonymous for their valour.
Let’s have a look at some of the game changers who turned the odds in their favour
Edward Snowden
This guy shook the entire America when he leaked few classified documents from the National Security Agency ( NSA) in 2013 while he was employed as a contractor there. His revelation directly lead to the fact that NSA tapped into the servers of nine internet firms, including Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo exposing all of the user’s data to the agency.
Currently he is safe in Moscow although unfortunately he is still considered a traitor by the US government.
Syed Aamir Raza Hussain
A former pharmaceutical salesman during 1994 at Nestle in Pakistan , this man disclosed how a multinational company would put sales ahead of infant health. In his 1999 report named ‘ Milking Profits' he has mentioned the dreadful scene of children dying out of acute diarrhoea due to the baby formula he was selling for his company.
He filed a complain at the World Health Organization after which life for him was not that easy. He would get threat calls every now and then asking him to back-off.
In an interview given to Catherine Porter who is an editor at “THE STAR” he tells that:
"I was thinking I was the stupidest person in the world. I was away from my family for seven years and my kids were very small when I left them. I still feel that seven-year gap between me and them. "
Jeffrey Wigand
This man is a former vice president of Research and Development wing at Brown and Williamson Tobacco Corporation who came into limelight after he exposed the amount of manipulation of nicotine being done by USA’s third most prominent tobacco company. After resigning from Brown & Williamson in 1993, he joined hands with the Food and Drug Administration ( FDA) along with the US government to look into the matters pertaining tobacco industries.
His revelation was so historic that it was portrayed by Rusell Crowe in the film, The Insider.
Julian Assange
A publisher, an activist and most importantly the founder of WikiLeaks is the world’s most wanted whistleblower. After having discovered WikiLeaks in 2006 he released a series of leaks pertaining to the US Army that included the Baghdad airstrike Collateral Murder video, the Afghanistan war logs , the Iraq war logs and Cablegate.
His work has been praised for potraying the death of civilians and the tortures inflicted upon them although the US government does not seem to be happy with his work as they accuse him of disclosing intelligence data that could harm the national integrity.
Valery Alekseyevich Legasov
Less than 24 hours after the Chernobyl disaster look place, Valery Legasov ( an inorganic chemist) was appointed as the key member to the Soviet government’s investigation team. While other officials tried their best to hide the reasons that led to it, Legasov fought with all his honesty and found out that the flaws in the design of the control rods in Chernobyl-type RBMK reactors led to such a lethal accident.
He accepted human errors as well as faulty design of the reactor,writing in his report,
“Neglect by the scientific management and the designers was everywhere with no attention being paid to the condition of instruments or of equipment”.
He was found hanging two years and one day after the explosion leaving behind questions that still remains unanswered including the reason of this death. What remained behind was 5 audio tapes recorded in his voice in which he expressed his view point on events that happened in Chernobyl.
After going through all the adventures, the question that arises is,“ Do the risks outweigh the benefits”? or “ Was it worth the shot”?
Whistleblower have to pay a heavy price for their action ranging from being socially ostracized to being fired in retaliation. Accusing an organisation for misdeeds is a hard nut to crack but if proved could seriously blow the image of that company. This risk makes the life of a whistleblower more complicated and risky at the same time.
According to the National Whistleblower Center, a non profit organization, about half are fired, and others face workplace harrasment or disciplinary action.
Although various laws have been passed to protect the rights of whistleblower. If we talk about USA , it has two major federal laws that aims at protecting whistleblower from retaliation , the first one is “Whistleblower Protection act” and the next one is the “False Claims Act” that empowers whistleblowers to sue the wrongdoer on behalf of U.S. government with evidence of fraud against federal agencies and collect monetary compensation.
In India , Whistleblower are protected under the Whistle Blower Protection Act, 2011 ( renamed as Whistle Blowers Protection Act,2014). There has been multiple instances which led to the formation of this act although it all began when an engineer, Satyendra Dubey, was murdered in November 2003, for exposing a corruption case in the National Highways Authority of India’s Golden Quadrilateral project.
Unfortunately this Act is yet to be operationalised and Indian companies operate under the whistleblower norms incorporated in the Companies Act of 2013. Political activists have been on the streets protesting to operationalise the act but all in vain.
Whistleblowers have been an integral part of a society. They are common people yet so uncommon. We all have that whistle within ourselves but alas! We lack the courage to blow it. Many of us even have that fortitude to blow the whistle but are afraid of the consequences that would follow.
It’s high time now, strict laws should be made for protecting the rights of whistleblower and enacted sincerely. As the corporate world is evolving, frauds and scams have been increased manifolds and “exposing the game of lies” is an urgent need.
If crucial measures will not be taken in the days to come, a father will tell his son:
" Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less travelled by, And that has made all the difference." -Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken.
