You help me, I help you!

Published : 7 Sept 2013, 05:31 AM
Updated : 7 Sept 2013, 05:31 AM

I have two really dear Chinese businessmen friends. They are actually from Hong Kong and given half a chance they will remind you of the fact. These two are successful businessmen in mainland China, Europe and Hong Kong. They are true Laoban (bosses). So, in order to protect the innocents let us call them Thomas and Toby, T&T for short. A few days ago, I was having dinner with them and their families in Eastern China. As Chinese dinners normally go this also was an elaborate affair with fish, chicken, pork, lamb and vegetables. Of course no rice, a.k.a. mi fan! That is the last thing in any Chinese dinner. They told me many stories and one of them struck home.

They are Foreign Direct Investors in Bangladesh. As opposed to just talking they have put down some money in the garments sector in Bangladesh. They, of course, see a profit and that is how it should be. I asked them as to what they thought of Bangladesh. Thomas the more thoughtful one said, it is the pervasive corruption above everything else that could stop Bangladesh from becoming a real player in the world. I thought he would say lack of infrastructure, lack of good roads, regular power outages, and lack of trained workforce. Nope! He said corruption. I have heard differently from someone I respect immensely and who is now almost at the top of the power structure in Bangladesh. So, I asked Thomas how does the corruption manifests for someone like him. He told me in great details how it starts almost from the moment he gets off the plane.

Typically he gets Walk-In visa once he lands. There is a fee you pay and you are in. I do that for Nepal mainly because it is only a few Dollars and back in Washingtod D. C., the Nepalese embassy is infamous for losing passports. Thomas has made many trips to Dhaka and every time some petty immigration officer takes him to the back room and utters these words or something similar, "you help me and I help you".

He says it never ever fails. The process which should be transparent and routine turns into a haggling session and sometime the bribe is as little as $10 and sometime as much as $50. It is not so much the money involved but the aggravation and unjust nature of the coercion and bribery that gets to him.

Thomas then told me a few more stories about corruption — large and small. Especially the difficulties he faced in setting up the Joint Venture and getting the right documentation. Every step of the way there was need for Speed Money. He has now resigned to the fact that Speed Money is the cost of doing business in Bangladesh and he builds that into the products that he makes and sells. Now this is a hidden tax and this tax exists mainly because we do not want to be transparent. The officialdom denies that corruption exists in a vehement and sustained way.

I know this person who was an academic, a thoughtful researcher, a professor at one of the top universities in the world. He is now part of the government. He is someone I respect immensely and wouldn't even hesitate to jump into raging inferno if he asked me to until I had a five-minute talk about corruption with him a few months ago in one of my quick Bangladesh trips.

I met him again after many years at a wedding reception in Dhaka. In some ways he has always been someone I looked up to and have been proud of. So, I was excited to meet with him after all these years. The "he" in question is now in a position of great power and influence in Bangladesh. I have been part of the family since I was a wild and unruly teenager. So, admittedly I was excited to meet up with him. He of Nehru coat and starched white salwars appeared among the many guests at the wedding reception. People parted for him like the Red Sea parted for Moses. Eventually, I managed to say hello and started to talk a little, just a little mind you.

Because he is now a political power broker the discussion moved on to politics. We somehow wandered about talking about the Padma Bridge debacle and I asked him why there is such endemic corruption in the country. Why was the government trying to defend the officials involved in Padma corruption case even though there was open proof of hanky-panky all the way in Canada where some of the contractor's people were going to prison?

Well, I touched a nerve without meaning to do so. He said, "I just saw four, count it four, surveys by four different newspapers and it showed that the corruption is not a problem in Bangladesh". Huh? I wanted to have my doctor check my ears and my sanity right there. In Canada the executives of the Company involved are going to prison for long years and this paragon of intellectual and political power was telling me things that are plainly counter factual! OK, let us be less politically correct — false, made-up crap! How is that possible? Why is that possible?

So, today months later I am in Dhaka figuring out how to make my way from Dhanmondi to Gulshan (used to be an easy walk and now a more elaborate car and walk thing). At my sister's place they are working on putting together a contract and we talked of Speed Money. I thought of Thomas and what my esteemed elder brother said months ago. Then it hit me like a ton of bricks. It is not the surface corruption that ails us; it is that our souls are corrupt! We do not consider corruption, as corruption!  We have eyes but we cannot see, we have ears but we do not hear, we have nose but we do not smell. In other words we have told our brains to ignore all facts and scream loudly about attacking Bangladesh whenever someone brings out corruption — big or small.

So, let us define corruption and see if the soul and facts are at odds. There is of course petty corruption and nepotism. In this case someone establishes a bias in terms of jobs and money for someone who is a kin. We Sylhetis are famous (infamous) for such petty corruption. If there was a job that I could hand out, my tribal instinct would always take me to a Sylheti against other equally qualified candidates. The price of such corruption is efficiency and eventually it takes a toll on the business and the project. Like they say "no good deed goes unpunished", petty corruption which maybe a good deed can turn into an economic disaster. I can attest to that personally. But, these are small potatoes compared to institutional and sustained corruption.

We are actually talking about systemic and institutional corruption, where the graft is the lubricant for everything big and small. You want to get on a bus to go to Sylhet from Dhaka — hand in a little money to the conductor so that he gives you the front seat with little extra legroom (never mind that the seats can be numbered), you want to come to Dhaka and get a legal visa at the airport then go to the back room and hand out some Dollars or Euros, you want to build a bridge across mighty Padma costing $5 billion then go ahead and increase the cost by 9% so that you can give me 7% and keep the 2% under the table, you want to borrow billions of Taka to do some "bidness" (yes it is bidness as Eddie Murphy would say as opposed to business) then cut in the bank manager and buy fancy cars for the key people in the bank and the government and the money is yours, you want to win a tender (which is rather odd because the bid/ask process is now fully automated and transparent in the world but not here of course) then make sure you have an inside track and secret deal. All of these things eat at the core of the society.

Now, people will say there is corruption everywhere. Yes, that is true but it is not as pervasive as anywhere else in the known universe as it is in Bangladesh. Bangladesh is ranked 144 in Corruption Index for 2012, a couple of points more corrupt than, wait for it, Pakistan! When I say that it is one of the most corrupt places in the universe I acknowledge that there are countries like Mali, Somalia and North Korea where there is perception of corruption worse than Bangladesh. But, these are mainly non-functioning war torn and/or post war countries. North Korea is a special case of dynastic corruption.

How, do we fix this? There is a social programme in the US and elsewhere for the alcoholics called, Alcoholics Anonymous (AA for short) which has a 12-step programme to recovery for debilitating alcoholism. I do not subscribe to many things they say or do, but there is a step that is essential for recovery; acknowledging that you are an alcoholic. Once you actually acknowledge that then you can go about fixing the issue.

Bangladesh needs a modified AA 12-step programme. The first and foremost task for the officialdom and the civil society would be to acknowledge that a problem exists. Going around with made up surveys like the one I mentioned or like the way the PM defended the minister who was patently corrupt on the Padma Bridge matter is not the way to cure. There is a study about "Scarcity mindset". The study was just published in a book by Mr. Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir, a psychologist at Princeton University. People's minds work differently when they feel they lack something. And it does not greatly matter what that something is. Anyone who feels strapped for money, friends, time or calories is likely to succumb to a similar "scarcity mindset". The scarcity mindset creates dangerous tunnel vision and people work around the clock to get rid of the feeling of scarcity.

Even though Bangladesh has become a much more economically viable place, the scarcity mindset and the desire to get the next house, car, MP-3, good biriyani, a version of Paradise on earth via the earthly things dominate our behaviour. I have come to the sad conclusion that the fixes like increasing salary for officials and even making transactions more transparent will not do any good. We need a total and compete rehab job on our hard wired brains and our worldview. We need to reset the "mindset". Long and hard task. And the first step is to acknowledge that the corruption is pervasive at all levels and figure out fixes as the society evolves. No prescriptions here, just a long and slow slog.

We can, of course, do it. We have lifted millions of people from poverty in Bangladesh so it is not a matter of capacity, rather a matter of desire and truth seeking.

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Kayes Ahmed lives in Boulder, Colorado, USA with his three dogs. He runs a small yet global apparel and design business based in Boulder.