By Tirthankar Mukherjee
As if two quotes as epigraph are not enough, I begin the text of the column with yet another, this one Mongolia-specific: “Mainstream media can’t stop fixating on a ‘corrupt’ (is there really any other kind?) government and the (yawn) Oyu Tolgoi negotiations.” My apologies for not being able to attribute this, but I cannot recollect where I read it, though it was quite recently.
There can be no question that corruption in public life eats into a nation’s vitals, affecting its growth and efficiency, but there can be no question also that some manifestation of corruption exists everywhere, even in countries with most integrity in the world and best governance, like most of the Nordic countries. I sometimes wonder why anything written on Mongolia so often seems to suggest that it is something unique here. Of course it is not, and the holier-than-thous glibly neglect to provide any likely-to-be effective solutions and ignore that corruption, especially of the monetary variety, is a two-way street. There is no taking unless something is given.
Not that movements either way in the middle ranks in Transparency International’s annual Corruption Perceptions Indexare of much consequence, for they often depend on what countries other than the one that is being ranked have done, but still it is notable that Mongolia has moved 26 spots (from 120 to 94) in the 2012 index. However, a new report, “Study of Private Perceptions of Corruption,” commissioned by The Asia Foundation and conducted by Sant Maral Foundation, shows that there is a long way still to go.
According to the report, “over 17 percent of large businesses (with transactions of more than MNT200 million) spent over 50 percent of their time overcoming non-productive obstacles, such as obtaining or renewing licences, facing temporary prohibitions, and navigating an unstable regulatory environment . The 11 percent of businesses able to overcome these obstacles have been able to accomplish this by using 25 percent of their company resources.Similarly, 16 percent of respondents reported they had observed instances of corruption in the last month, and nearly 50 percent reported they had personal knowledge of corrupt transactions in the past seven months. A total of 75 percent of businesses reported they “always” or “often” encountered corruption in public tenders and contracting.”
So there we are, but are we to stay stuck where we are? I recently read two books on the never-ending fight against corruption in business and government, and I am left with a sense of optimism. One was a general study,“Waging War On Corruption: Inside The Movement Fighting The Abuse Of Power”,by Frank Vogl,and the other focused on India (corruption where can give Mongolia a run for its money any time, any day, any sector), “ENDING CORRUPTION? — How to Clean up India” by N. Vittal. Vogl was a co-founder of Transparency International and its vice-chairman for nine years, and remains a partisan, while Vittal was Vigilance Commissioner in India, an experience that gives him the know-how of tackling corruption in large and complex bureaucracies.
Both admit the disconnect between rhetoric and reality. Business, where behaviour in the arms, energy and natural resource industries, among others, is often predicated on the idea that bribery is just part of the marketing toolbox (though nobody nowadays can publicly say so) has not moved much, if at all, from the following example from the mid-1970s, whenthe then chairman of Lockheed, told a subcommittee of the US Senate that bribery was part of global business. It was, he added, “the way things got done”.
Can the problem of corruption be mastered? Vogl acknowledges the obvious difficulties, but is optimistic. He points to the Arab Spring as giving this battle enormous momentum, arguing that corrupt leaders have been warned as never before and that a new age of transparency is empowering civil society activism. Courageous campaigning by activists, journalists, public prosecutors and, at times, ordinary people driven to despair, shows the way.
There are huge institutional obstacles to progress, but international efforts are bearing fruit. New laws have raised the cost of wrongdoing. Financial markets are punishing corrupt companies. Most encouraging, activists have growing clout not only in high-profile cases but at grassroots level, where the internet helps to highlight instances of “quiet” (low-level) corruption.
Robert Palmer of Global Witness, a campaigning group, notes that international discussions no longer tiptoe round the word “corruption”. A culture of denial has given way to at least lip-service to the cause.Businesses, hamstrung by their obligations to sharerholders, still say they like the way clean government creates a level playing-field. In a corrupt country, “you are only as good as your last bribe”, I read one unidentified executive say at a conference.
Lower-profile efforts are spreading too. Not In My Country, a web-based campaign in Uganda, encourages students to report instances of corruption—such as teachers demanding sex for higher grades. Janaagraha, a Bangalore-based group, runs ipaidabribe.com, which has recorded thousands of bribes paid or sought; “heat maps” plot instances of corruption. Similar websites operate in Pakistan, Kenya, Liberia and Indonesia. They help even the humble to fight back.
Fighting corruption, like fighting crime, is often thought of as the police’s job, but Vittal argues that you need to use the methods of both a doctor and an engineer to get it done. You have to see it as a disease of the polity, which requires engineering principles to optimise its efficiency and robustness. All engineering systems need maintenance, which can be either preventive, predictive or breakdown, and it is the extreme level of breakdown maintenance that Vittal thinks is required.Combining that with the medical approach makes the best formula for tackling corruption.
Vittal repeatedly emphasises the cleansing role that can be played by individuals. Encouraging bureaucrats in particular to take principled stands, he says, “If you persist you will inevitably overcome any resistance.”It is never easy to deal with the weaknesses in human nature, and selecting strong, ethical officials for positions of power ultimately depends on society – each and every member of society.
How to select officials maybe a political question, but it really is about policy. Every Chinese knows the saying: “It doesn’t matter if the cat is black or white so long as it catches mice”, but Indians have another cat-and-mice story in the same context. A harassed rat seeks an owl’s advice on what he can do about a cat which makes his life miserable. The owl is wise as well as practical. His advice is that the rat should become another cat so that he can fight back. The rat likes the idea and asks the owl, “But how does a rat become a cat?” The owl’s answer is terse, “I give policy directions – implementation is your problem!”
That is the bottom line. We know what is to be done, but the way to do it remains elusive.Market forces alone will not solve corruption – the state has to take a leading role, but which policeman can police himself? And a State, meaning its government, can be only so committed to controlling corruption as those who elected it.
