We want to know how corruption is to be eliminated under a corrupt government
31 January 2023
The private think tank Centre for Policy Dialogue in its report 'Bangladesh Business Environment Study 2022: Findings from the Executive Opinion Survey' found that corruption was the topmost hindrance for doing business in 2022. That it surely was. The CPD says, due to corruption, the majority of enterprises are failing to achieve their goal and the severity of its impact was gradually shared by other structural and newly emerged problematic factors.
Before publishing this report, CPD made a study where it was found that 64.6 per cent of the respondents complained about high levels of corruption as the major problematic factor while 44.6 percent identified inadequate infrastructure as the second-most problematic factor.
Any conscious citizen of the country knows well that these problems continue to persist in the country and with the passing of time these problems are getting even more acute. But the people of the country want to know, from think tanks like CPD, answers to more serious questions as to why corruption is spreading its tentacles even deeper in society and how these could be cut down once and for all.
Most people know that corruption here is endemic, but few people realize that a government that has no electoral mandate in the last two general elections but is continuing using police and party muscle power has allowed people to indulge in embezzlement of banks, financial institutions, mega corruption in mega projects, bribery in public offices big or small. In the public service sector, 'speed money', a new term for bribe, was coined in an apparent failure to stop the menace. Massive money laundering under the watch of this government has made the economy hollow.
When the government itself indulges in corruption, sometimes it comes with steps against corruption which are more confined to rhetoric than actual fight against it. This is to camouflage people. The CPD knows very well that when this is the reality, it is impossible to root out corruption without ensuring accountability in the government.
Now, what is ironically very sad is that CPD and similar other organizations as well as a section of educated people who are at the vanguard of society, always fall short of telling this truth. Therefore, for the rot that is going on in society, these educated people, who tell the half truth and not the whole truth, are also responsible. Let them tell us the whole truth about how to stop corruption and who are surviving on it. Duplicity of our educated experts is to be blamed first.
