Undoing the growing black hole of corruption

Maria Waqar (TALKING POINT) / 15 February 2013

South Asia has recently witnessed a stark rise in anti-corruption superstars in politics.

Widespread anti-corruption protests led by iconic activist Anna Hazare in India in 2011 were momentous because for the first time in history, the Indian people pressurised their government to pass a piece of anti-corruption legislation: the Citizen’s Ombudsman Bill. Apart from the India against Corruption movement, Hazare’s movement also became the trigger for a new force in mainstream politics: the Aam Aadmi (Common man) party led by Hazare’ former colleague activist Arvind Kejriwal and lawyer-activist Prashant Bhushan. Kejriwal, who has strong aspirations for making a mark in politics in the forthcoming parliamentary elections, has been vociferously hurling allegations against mainstream politicians, mainly from the Congress party, for their supposed involvement in corrupt practices.

A similar demand for rooting out corruption has spawned across India’s border. The anti-corruption movement in Pakistan is heralded by cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan. His party Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf has amassed a huge following among the country’s youth, is famous for pledging that he would eliminate corruption in 90 days if he is elected as Pakistan’s prime minister.

In India and Pakistan, where official corruption penetrates the lowest rung of the bureaucracy to the highest echelons of power, promises of a corruption-free system by activists and politicians with clean personal records, have been welcomed by the public. But as well-intentioned as these promises might be, they have actually made people think unrealistically about the phenomenon. So, at this particular juncture, it’s really important to get some facts straight about corruption, which I will simply define as the use of public office for private gain.

While the Indian and Pakistani media is in the habit of lamenting the supposedly ever-rising levels of corruption, the fact is that the actual extent of corruption is very difficult to assess. Scientifically, it is actually very difficult to calculate how much money is lost due to corrupt practices in a country, because many illicit dealings — ranging from every day bribes given to the traffic police to millions squandered in infrastructure contracts — cannot be tracked and measured. Hence, the term “black hole” often used to describe financial losses due to corruption, is apt because it alludes to immeasurability of the money lost due to illicit dealings.