Anti-graft efforts should start on small scale

The anti-corruption efforts should start from the place where it is easier to enforce the rule of law so that the experience can be transitioned later to other sectors prone to graft, said a British-Bangladeshi economist on Wednesday.

Despite a common understanding in the society about who the corrupt are, the challenge is to find out whether it is feasible to take action against those powerful people, he opined.

The economist, Mushtaq H Khan, a professor of SOAS University of London, made the comments at the Kazi Ali Toufique Memorial Lecture on 'Power, Governance and Feasible Anti-Corruption'.

Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS) organised the lecture at its auditorium in the city's Agargaon, while BIDS Director General Dr Binayak Sen moderated the session.

In a presentation, Professor Khan said, "Institutions, laws and regulations aren't enough to curb the spread of corruption, rather emphasis should be given to understand whether the process is feasible to implement considering socio-political reality."

A plausible solution to reduce the spread of corruption in developing countries like Bangladesh is to start from less corrupt sectors to use the proven enforcement examples to determine feasibility, he said.

To him, feasibility means there are sufficiently powerful actors in the society who will help to implement the anti-corruption efforts out of self-interest.

Professor Khan, also Chief Executive of the Anti-Corruption Evidence (ACE) Research Consortium at SOAS, said very slow or limited progress was observed in anti-corruption efforts across the world over the past decade.

Referring that many costly anti-corruption strategies have failed around the world, Mr Khan said, "General observation in many developing countries show that courts, judges, police administrations, etc become the problems towards eradicating corruption."

More generally, effective rule-enforcement depends on the distribution of power, capability and interests across relevant actors as revealed in their actual behaviour, he further said.

Professor Khan said, "In developing and emerging countries, we do not find transparency and accountability measures are sufficient to reduce corruption because information about corruption does not lead to action in many cases."

To him, there are three components of a feasible anti-corruption strategy - enhancing effective checks, creating effective checks, and mitigation and transformation.

Above all, curbing corruption largely depends on political settlement where the actors working on reducing corruption are given enough tools to detect irregularities, making the people accountable for their misdeeds and setting examples of punishment, Mr Khan said.

Feasible and effective anti-corruption effort requires identifying and incentivising the actors who can and want to implement it, he added.

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