Editorial
TI grading does not alter the concern
Slight improvement is good, but not enough
THE country's position has improved slightly as per the corruption perception index of TI. It has gone three notches down and is now rated 13th out of 180 countries, with a score of 2.4 which was just good enough for not finishing among the ten most corrupt countries in the world. But respectability is still a far cry, as the countries scoring less than 3 are believed to be plagued by all-pervasive corruption.
There is obviously no room for complacency. The TI grading shows that we are making progress at a very slow pace. And that is of course self evident from the corrupt practices still rampant in government offices. Bribing is still the only way to get jobs done in most of the offices and those refusing to bribe the employees and officials have to undergo a long ordeal. Unfortunately, the corrupt still rule the roost.
However, there have been some positive developments also. The last caretaker government's anti-corruption drive, though somewhat flawed in the sense that excesses are believed to have been committed, left a wholesome impact on the overall-goings on. And it has been reported that some of the cases earlier initiated by the ACC are going to be revived. The ACC's powers appear to have been clipped though.
Introduction of modern technology in certain areas might also simplify and quicken the pace of service delivery. For instance, the government has promised to make life easier for buyers and sellers of land through introducing a computerised service for land registration that will take very little time compared to the existing arrangements and leave fewer opportunities for the corrupt employees to fleece people.
It is no consolation that other countries in South Asia have not improved their performance appreciably. Still, most of them are ahead of Bangladesh with only Pakistan and Nepal not performing better than us. The point to be noticed here is that the countries having a very poor corruption perception index are grappling with social, political and economic disorders of the most complex kind. So, we have to not only acknowledge but also learn from the harsh truth that corruption is but a symptom of deeper malfunctioning that a society suffers from when things go wrong on key fronts.
Hence, it follows that curbing corruption has to be part of the bigger scheme of establishing the rule of law and a just social order.
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