Personally, I find bribes etc distasteful and I have tried my utmost to avoid bribing or to be bribed. I fully believed and tried lived up to Tagore's dictum that equal blame should go to those who do wrong and those who condone it. As a senior government official I had a degree of immunity from demands of bribes because I could to send people out to get things done without bribes, using my position. Sending personal assistants etc on such errands was in itself misuse of privilege, but I justified that to myself as part of my personal anti-corruption drive. In other words, my position protected me from bribe seekers, who are everywhere.

After retirement however I have lost my protection, and I have to satisfy petty bribe takers, which is now the most unsavoury part of my life. It gives me a feeling of not being a free man of a free country, as others decide whether or not I can live an honest life. Before submitting to such ignominy, I however tried to obtain assistance of my friends and colleagues who were still occupying positions of some influence, but soon they and I got tired of swimming against the current. I now very reluctantly pay for fitness certificate of my fully fit car and either forego train trips or pay bribes for train tickets. I am amazed at the depth of the bribe takers club; of which almost everybody seems to be a member, and the takes are proportional to the rank of the taker.

When the TI index came out, politicians and bureaucrats who form the citadel of corruption and participate in, condone, and personally benefit from it, made feeble protests or expressed glee depending on whether they were in or out of power. The nation however has had the stigma attached to it ever since, and as a Bangladeshi you feel it following you while travelling abroad. In the meanwhile, actual level of corruption has attained new heights in spite of elections and government changes proving time and again that we are not about to rid ourselves of this degrading phenomenon through normal political and administrative processes. The biggest hurdle on the way to fighting corruption is that because of its persistence and pervasiveness, corrupt ways have attained de facto legitimacy in the society, as people have accepted it as a fact of life, and the government nods quietly.

Controlling corruption should have been an important part of the government's strategy of improving governance, which is every government's primary obligation. Some degree of corruption exists in almost every country, developing countries have higher levels of corruption, because governments cannot formulate effective policies, give enough resources, and cannot muster the necessary political will. But it can reach the level as it has in Bangladesh only if the government and major political parties participate in it. For proof, you need to look no further than the performance of erstwhile Bureau of Anti-Corruption (BAC) under successive governments and the new botched ACC. BAC, working under the direct supervision of the Prime Minister, was used as a tool of political victimisation to silence political opposition and to allow free run to friends and allies. There is no evidence that the ACC will do any better. So great is the involvement of the political parties and the governments in corruption that the only voice against it, though not effective yet, comes from outside the country.

One might wonder why the government of Bangladesh must condone and in a way encourage corruption in the face of widespread condemnation abroad and disapproval inside the country. The reason, in my opinion, is that the political strength of the principal actors of our political system is underpinned by financial, physical, and organisational structure steeped in black money generated by crime and corruption. You will know this from the fact that no political party is willing to make public information about its sources of income and heads of expenditure though they must be collecting and spending millions for party related activities ranging from rallies, elections, hartal enforcements, and to maintain offices.

Once a new government is elected, it has only a small window of opportunity to initiate measures to deal with the menace of corruption. This is a short period between the election results and announcement of the cabinet posts. After the cabinet posts have been announced and right people have not been put in the right places it is already too late. The die has been cast and a major change of course, such as initiation of an anticorruption drive, is almost impossible. The corrupt will soon have a stranglehold over the activities of the government. They will encircle the chief executive, centralise control, and limit access to the centre of power to the chosen few. This process has been facilitated by absence of democratic process within the parties where one person has been endowed with monarchical power.

Another reason why the status quo is maintained year after year and regime after regime is because of intense and no holds barred political rivalry (again caused by the lure of plunder in power), the major Bangladeshi political parties are highly polarised. Personal hatred has become the basis for public policy. There is no middle ground where leaders of different parties can meet. Parties are also highly polarised in their inner working. They are simply and completely devoid of any political ideology or programs that may attract workers with character and right kind of competence. Blind and narrow loyalty is the only quality required to climb the party ladders. Anyone raising questions about propriety or legality of party actions or policies is dealt with harshly. Section 70 of the constitution reflects and institutionalises absence of dialogue and internal dissent.

In the absence of dialogue among the parties, can any party go for unilateral action on issues like student politics, politicisation of administration, hartals, rigging in the polls, or maintaining party criminals? Unilateral action, however noble, will put the party concerned, in or out of power, in serious short term disadvantage. No leader, however strong and determined, will risk this, and a serious push for elimination of corruption in Bangladesh is highly unlikely. Government of the corrupt and by the corrupt is likely to continue for the foreseeable future. Bangladesh politics has simply lost its ability to take corrective actions through elections. Democracy is more or less meaningless in this situation and has been reduced to election formalities only.

At this juncture, effective pressure to do something about corruption can only come from the donors. They should do so firstly because they were part of the problem, and also because in contemporary Bangladesh there is no better issue which will address their political, economic, governance and human right concerns. The US is specially well placed to play the role of terminator of corruption. US has articulated its concerns, but has not taken any concrete actions.Specially effective will be a policy of visa denials to the corrupt and their children to the US. The ultimate dream of the corrupt is to head to the US and to send their children there. It gives them the kind of fulfillment they do not get in their own country. This action will fall in line with the objectives of the war on terror. A precedent has already been created by similar action in case of Narendra Modi of India.

M. Ahmed is a retired government employee