Bangladesh's corruption rank is unsurprising

The common people in Bangladesh cannot help feeling unease at the yearly 'sobriquet' of one of the top corrupt countries in the world that hangs around its neck like the Ancient Mariner's dead albatross, courtesy of the Berlin-based Transparent International (TI). Its Bangladesh chapter releases the perceived extent of corruption in the public sector around this time each year. Lest there may be complaint of biasness against the country, data from eight international surveys, not from any national research organisations including the TIB, were taken into reckoning for preparation of the Bangladesh's corruption ranking.

Then, why should the majority of ordinary people feel slighted by the TI-generated Corruption Perception Index (CPI)? It is because they are not involved in corruption. Well, a vey minuscule portion of them may have to part with some speed money because of their unfamiliarity with the due procedures and the middlemen or agents or the clerks or petty officers in public offices, who do the job in their favour or serve them, compel them to pay the bribe money. They are almost taken a hostage and made to cough up the speed money for services to be rendered free of cost. From the legal point view, they may be a party to the crime but they are made malleable only under duress.

This is evidence enough that the majority of the people here are not corrupt and yet they have to put up with this demeaning branding of a nation as a whole. It is the so-called educated, the privileged, the influential and the powerful who turn the administrative system into a breeding ground of corruption. If the top political leadership and the bureaucracy could stay clean and set an example of integrity and professionalism and strictly enforce a regime of honesty and zero tolerance to irregularities and corruption in functioning of public services, this would have been the order of the day down the rank. A fish rots from the head.

There is nothing to be surprised at the score of 23 on a 0-100 scale with lowest score denoting the most corrupt and the highest score the least corrupt among the 188 countries put under the TI scanner. Even its lowest score of 23, one point lower than that of 2023 is hardly shocking because the level of corruption never registered a significant decrease since the country came under the TI coverage in 2001. It held the lowest position from the inaugural year until 2005. Over the past decade, its corruption ranking did not show any significant improvement with its scores hovering in between 24-26. Only in 2013 and 2017, did the score rise to 27 and 28 respectively. But this has ever remained much lower than the global average. For example, this year the country's score is far lower than the global average of 43. Although 122 countries have this dubious distinction, it is small consolation for Bangladesh. More so, because in the post-uprising six months, there seems to be no positive reflection of the interim government's rule.

What is particularly disgraceful is that the country has its corruption ranking just a notch above that of Afghanistan in the South Asian region. It is even mortifying that Bangladesh fares much worse in the prevalence of corruption compared to the average of the countries in sub-Saharan Africa. In all, 47 countries including Bangladesh registered their lowest scores in the past 13 years. But neighbouring Bhutan, a landlocked and resource-poor country, has improved its ranking by four points while its big neighbours including India have recorded a drop of their points with Sri Lanka dropping six.

However, Sri Lanka has demonstrated enough resilience to overcome its economic malaise and may be set on course of improving its corruption track records this year. Can Bangladesh do so? The reform commissions formed earlier have recommended ways out but without implementation some of the vital reforms, the country hardly stands any chance of reducing corruption and doing justice to the discrimination-free society envisaged by the architects of the July-August uprising.

The problem is with consumerism, an offshoot of free market economy, that stokes human avarice to limitless level. A Benazir, the ex-IGP and a Motiur, an official of the Anti-corruption Commission (ACC), are the examples of how people in responsible places stooped very low to accumulate wealth beyond one's means and outside of one's legitimate income. When a regime of exploiting the public money of this order is created under the patronage of the people in power, the entire system rots like the proverbial fish.

Such a development has its more pronounced adverse impacts on the lower strata of society. Wealth getting concentrated to a few hands because of the oligarchic and kleptocratic indulgence, the majority are deprived of their minimum requirements for living a decent human life. When social and economic orders are thus artificially controlled and distorted, a nation experiences its malgrowth.

In this connection, the TIB chief's observation that the countries ranked at the top echelon also encourages corruption in countries like Bangladesh by welcoming unclean funds laundered from those is to the point. True, the source country is mainly responsible but the clean ones become a party to the corruption not by default but by turning a blind eye to the crime. Shouldn't this international double standard also change? Vulnerable and resource-constraint countries have numerous problems and the countries with enviable home records on corruption tend to drain out money in a more subtle way than the colonial masters once employed. An international discourse on the issue is overdue.

nilratanhalder2000@yahoo.com