To be corrupt is a crime and to make-believe otherwise is a greater crime. It is tantamount to fraud and self-deception.

There have been efforts to discredit the TI report. That the report has been based on newspaper reports and hence superficial; that all the countries of the world have not come up in TI survey; that more large scale corruption is being committed in developed countries and so on. Such disparaging estimation of the TI report, in fact, little detracts from the weight it carries worldwide. Our clamour itself following the report speaks a lot about its bearings with our image (if any, though one may very rightly wonder how a least developed country with a very low human development position and a terror-stricken society could enjoy any sort of positive image in the world comity of nations) which we've increasingly been fussy about.

As regards the attempt to discredit the TI report as its having been based on press reports, I'd like to say that it is no statesman-like acumen flatly looking down upon press reports. Reports are supposed to be the outcome of long, meticulous efforts at striking the truth behind the facade of our tinsel polity. A report is best judged by its readers. A regular reader can measure the credibility of a report.

If a report inspires a general perception of belief and is not effectively challenged or refuted, it carries all the merit and weight to count.

A country or a government being corrupted or not does not depend on being so branded or not by an organisation. A rotten fish stinks of its condition. A vendor's clamour in favour of his fish cannot give lie to the fact that the fish is rotten in its head and all over. The people of a country need no extra human faculty to perceive the extent and existence of corruption in their country.

The experiences of our daily life speak amply about what and how we are. What we get when we seek service of any state utility, when we take our patients to a hospital, when we take to court for justice, when we seek our children's admission to a school, when we in a state of distress and misery, solicit the help of the police, when we draw the kind attention of our political or bureaucratic high-ups for any help as a matter of right? What we encounter in each of the cases above only accentuates the painful reality of all-pervasive corruption in our homeland called Bangladesh.

It will not pay in the long run if we fight shy of this phenomenon that corruption having started in the head has now permeated every part of the body of our state and society. Our people have long been frustrated to find the two greatest institutions of the state equally steeped in corruption. The civil and military leaders who have been part of our political scenarios have let go of the rein of corruption to their sheer aggrandizement. Involvement and commission indulgence and connivance on their part have paved the way for the civil and military servants to follow suit. If anyone who is not somebody in terms of money, power, or clout approaches a political or government functionary for some legal and due help and is spared the venal bite, it will certainly be a rare example of serendipity. In present circumstances we render ourselves only vulnerable if we dare to deny the preying guys any graft.

When corruption braves in, governance takes to its heels. One may ask how people still live here if the situation is so precarious. The answer is: The indomitable human urge for life and that hope runs eternal in man. He can be destroyed, but cannot be defeated, to borrow from Hemingway. Even in hell, man tries to peer for rays of light out of heaven. In Bangladesh, the press, the fourth estate is heaven, from where emanates the rays of hope for such long, long let down people. At every step we feel a sense of deprivation. But while we read the pages of a newspaper (exceptions are not unusual), we don't feel let down. Rather, we feel we are enjoyng our right to know thanks to the tenacious courage of the press.

But the fourth estate cannot alone change the other estates. The political leaders are the architects of society. If they prefer the unfair to the fair, the present state of thing will, perhaps, be the eternal lot of our people. Plain living and high thinking has long taken leave of our leadership. Amassing wealth by putting integrity, altruism, sacrifice for posterity on the pyre is their sole mission. Everyday our political and bureaucratic high-ups with not many exceptions make a bonfire of good sense. Personal agenda always remains their topmost priority. With their cupidity scaling higher and higher, their political rhetoric and histrionics amount to strutting and fretting upon the stage, signifying nothing for the country.

We had been a nation deceived by the rulers and bureaucrats alike since long before Transparency International came into being or it started to cover Bangladesh in its survey. Our daily experiences have just been reflected in the TI report. We may fall out with TI, but such acrimonious reactions will not pay off in the least in lessening our self-inflicted miseries. We need not acclaim or defame it. We just need to mend our ways. The rulers cannot continue to perpetrate their personal and partisan agenda, nor we the ruled should keep our fingers crossed. Our leaders, our lawmakers, our bureaucrats urgently need to realize that they have long ceased to inspire for them any regard in the minds of the people. It is not a good omen for the nation as a whole. The leaders are supposed to guide us along the road to prosperity, peace and glory. They will never be able to do so as long as they do not overcome the lures of easy personal and partisan gains through corruption and other sharp practices. If the political leaders do not maintain a clean state and a clear conscience they will never be able to stop the corruption of the government officials. Example is better than precept.

Corruption is committed also in many developed countries. Evil instinct of man is not peculiar to a certain group or category of states. But very few states reel under such hideous prevalence of corruption as Bangladesh. It is ludicrous to feel complacent by seeking semblance of our poor show in other countries. It is high time we thrash out ways to stop the relentless sweep of corruption across the fabric of our national life.