Addressing 'whys' of corruption
Tuesday, 31 July 2007
M I Ali
THE seven points of the Chief of the Army Staff of Bangladesh identifies the low salary of the police as one of the issues that need to be rectified in order to stem corruption in the country. Low salary is indeed a major factor that leads to corruption, the bread earner of the family will always bring bread home by hook or by crook, and in most cases, by crook as the hook does not pay enough. And once a person starts to earn money by crook, sky is the limit.
Bangladesh was primarily an agrarian society, with low level of education and an even lower level of expectation. Historically, the rulers of this country, all of whom were foreigners, and their compradors had instilled the idea in the minds of the Bengalis that they were an inferior race, good enough only to be led but without the capability to lead.
Historians can correct this but as Khawaja Nazimuddin traced his origins from Kashmir, the honour of being the first Bengali to lead a country probably belongs to Muhammad Ali of Bogra who became the Prime Minister of Pakistan in 1953.
He too drew his strength from the West Pakistanis. Therefore Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was the first Bengali to lead most of Bengal with true Bengali power base. Thus, when in 1971 the Bengalis became the masters of their own fate for the first time, the new Bengali rulers unfortunately chose to continue the practice of the previous non-Bengali rulers of paying low salaries to the employees of the state.
This was also largely due to the fact that the new state of Bangladesh was a socialist economy where the state was the sole employer, there was little money in the exchequer and salaries had to be reduced to a ludicrously low level. The cost of living on the other hand began to increase by leaps and bounds, making it impossible for the salaried persons to make ends meet. To make matters worse, government leaders maintained a high lifestyle and did not seem to lack anything.
Corruption started to creep in as people had to find ways to supplement their meager income in whatever way they could to meet the rising cost of living. Things have not changed much since, cost of living has always been one step ahead of whatever salary increase a person received. And to meet this gap there was but no alternative to corruption. The average Bengali understood this rationale and corruption became an accepted phenomenon, albeit grudgingly.
From the begining of the nineties Bangladesh began to undergo a transition, from a totalitarian dictatorship to a totalitarian democracy where the prime minister wielded the same dictatorial powers as the president of the previous system. The country now elected a dictator to rule it for five years.
There was no accountability or transparency of government actions and because, with the exception of a few, all government employees supplemented their salaries with extra official income, there was no urgency for real term increase in government salaries to meet the actual cost of living.
General corruption, not to be confused with the mega corruption of a few, had become an economic reality for Bangladesh and there was not much resistance to it. The other thing that happened in the nineties was that the private sector replaced the government as the country's largest employer.
The government's role also began to undergo a change, from that of a industrial and service monopoly to that of a regulatory authority. While the government began to concede its industrial and service functions to the private sector, its size, instead of decreasing, kept on increasing through the creation of new ministries, so much so that by the end of 2006 there were well over one hundred persons who officially enjoyed the status of various kinds of ministers. So on the one hand there were a very large number of government employees who had been rendered redundant while on the other hand, government kept on recruiting more people.
The system we have in place today is defective and encourages corruption and employment of inappropriate people to government positions. Low salaries have also encouraged bright, honest and meritorious young people to seek their future outside the country leaving the field open to the ostensibly less virtuous people to vie for government positions.
A case in point is the young man who claims to have paid more than a million taka to a lawyer to secure the job of a police sergeant. Had this person got the job, what kind of honesty could be expected of him? Woe be to the country whose youth dream only of leaving the country for foreign lands. To discourage corruption in the country fundamental changes have to be brought about in the government. A strategic plan has to be made to visualise government's role in the immediate future and to determine the number of people needed, complete with their job descriptions, to run the government effectively.
Selection should be made through an independent public service commission to ensure that the right persons are selected for the right jobs and paid the right salaries. The top bureaucrats of the government, in this case the departmental secretaries, should not be paid less than the salaries of the CEOs of top private sector companies and proportionally downwards. The average annual gross salaries of the top private sector CEOs are currently in excess of taka twelve million (1.2 crore) per annum.
Only this can ensure the appointment of top quality people who can be expected to remain honest in their dealings.
The salaries and perquisites of the government ministers, as public representatives, can remain at the current level as serving the people and not money should be reward enough for them.
A job audit in the government will more likely than not result in a significant reduction in the size of the government. Higher salaries in a smaller government may not require much more than the current government salary bill.
The resultant reduction in corruption, which can never be eliminated, may result in the saving of up to between two to five percent of the gross domestic product of the country that is currently lost to corruption. This will more than adequately compensate any increased payments the government may have to make for higher wages to its employees. There is but no other way to escape from the curse of corruption.
The writer is a freelancer
THE seven points of the Chief of the Army Staff of Bangladesh identifies the low salary of the police as one of the issues that need to be rectified in order to stem corruption in the country. Low salary is indeed a major factor that leads to corruption, the bread earner of the family will always bring bread home by hook or by crook, and in most cases, by crook as the hook does not pay enough. And once a person starts to earn money by crook, sky is the limit.
Bangladesh was primarily an agrarian society, with low level of education and an even lower level of expectation. Historically, the rulers of this country, all of whom were foreigners, and their compradors had instilled the idea in the minds of the Bengalis that they were an inferior race, good enough only to be led but without the capability to lead.
Historians can correct this but as Khawaja Nazimuddin traced his origins from Kashmir, the honour of being the first Bengali to lead a country probably belongs to Muhammad Ali of Bogra who became the Prime Minister of Pakistan in 1953.
He too drew his strength from the West Pakistanis. Therefore Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was the first Bengali to lead most of Bengal with true Bengali power base. Thus, when in 1971 the Bengalis became the masters of their own fate for the first time, the new Bengali rulers unfortunately chose to continue the practice of the previous non-Bengali rulers of paying low salaries to the employees of the state.
This was also largely due to the fact that the new state of Bangladesh was a socialist economy where the state was the sole employer, there was little money in the exchequer and salaries had to be reduced to a ludicrously low level. The cost of living on the other hand began to increase by leaps and bounds, making it impossible for the salaried persons to make ends meet. To make matters worse, government leaders maintained a high lifestyle and did not seem to lack anything.
Corruption started to creep in as people had to find ways to supplement their meager income in whatever way they could to meet the rising cost of living. Things have not changed much since, cost of living has always been one step ahead of whatever salary increase a person received. And to meet this gap there was but no alternative to corruption. The average Bengali understood this rationale and corruption became an accepted phenomenon, albeit grudgingly.
From the begining of the nineties Bangladesh began to undergo a transition, from a totalitarian dictatorship to a totalitarian democracy where the prime minister wielded the same dictatorial powers as the president of the previous system. The country now elected a dictator to rule it for five years.
There was no accountability or transparency of government actions and because, with the exception of a few, all government employees supplemented their salaries with extra official income, there was no urgency for real term increase in government salaries to meet the actual cost of living.
General corruption, not to be confused with the mega corruption of a few, had become an economic reality for Bangladesh and there was not much resistance to it. The other thing that happened in the nineties was that the private sector replaced the government as the country's largest employer.
The government's role also began to undergo a change, from that of a industrial and service monopoly to that of a regulatory authority. While the government began to concede its industrial and service functions to the private sector, its size, instead of decreasing, kept on increasing through the creation of new ministries, so much so that by the end of 2006 there were well over one hundred persons who officially enjoyed the status of various kinds of ministers. So on the one hand there were a very large number of government employees who had been rendered redundant while on the other hand, government kept on recruiting more people.
The system we have in place today is defective and encourages corruption and employment of inappropriate people to government positions. Low salaries have also encouraged bright, honest and meritorious young people to seek their future outside the country leaving the field open to the ostensibly less virtuous people to vie for government positions.
A case in point is the young man who claims to have paid more than a million taka to a lawyer to secure the job of a police sergeant. Had this person got the job, what kind of honesty could be expected of him? Woe be to the country whose youth dream only of leaving the country for foreign lands. To discourage corruption in the country fundamental changes have to be brought about in the government. A strategic plan has to be made to visualise government's role in the immediate future and to determine the number of people needed, complete with their job descriptions, to run the government effectively.
Selection should be made through an independent public service commission to ensure that the right persons are selected for the right jobs and paid the right salaries. The top bureaucrats of the government, in this case the departmental secretaries, should not be paid less than the salaries of the CEOs of top private sector companies and proportionally downwards. The average annual gross salaries of the top private sector CEOs are currently in excess of taka twelve million (1.2 crore) per annum.
Only this can ensure the appointment of top quality people who can be expected to remain honest in their dealings.
The salaries and perquisites of the government ministers, as public representatives, can remain at the current level as serving the people and not money should be reward enough for them.
A job audit in the government will more likely than not result in a significant reduction in the size of the government. Higher salaries in a smaller government may not require much more than the current government salary bill.
The resultant reduction in corruption, which can never be eliminated, may result in the saving of up to between two to five percent of the gross domestic product of the country that is currently lost to corruption. This will more than adequately compensate any increased payments the government may have to make for higher wages to its employees. There is but no other way to escape from the curse of corruption.
The writer is a freelancer