For a Bangladeshi, being rated as a most corrupt nation by an international organisation was very depressing. We had to defend ourselves wherever we went. We always felt that the world was looking down on us. Inside the country, apart from our politicians and government officials, every Bangladeshi would agree that on an average, we are far from being honest as individuals. We’ve already searched our souls and found that we commit all sorts of inappropriate acts that don’t uphold the values of honesty.
There, perhaps, isn’t a single thing that we’re doing right. We’ve been leaking exam question papers on a regular basis, making our own food spurious, keeping the works for which we’ve been paid for unfinished, and extorting money from parents in the name of coaching school children. The list would be very, very long. The old adage “honesty is the best policy” has been deleted from our psyche.
Despite this wasteland scenario, there’s also good news. A few international news headlines recently have portrayed a different picture about us. Several Bangladeshi expatriates in Los Angeles, New York, and Rome have displayed remarkable examples of honesty by returning huge amounts of lost money to their owners. There were also a few news stories on how Bangladeshi workers overseas are showing their worth by building cities and towns.
The question that naturally popped up in my mind: “Do we, the corrupt lot, only become honest in an honest environment?” I posed this question to many in the recent past. They all said: “No; there are still many honest people in the country, and that’s why we’re still continuing as a nation.”
I also think in the same way. But when I get out on the street, I don’t see any law enforcer properly carrying out their duty. I don’t see any taxi driver taking the fare according to the meter, I don’t see anyone following traffic rules. Go in front of your child’s school to bring him home, the security personnel would ask for money. Go to the passport office to collect your passport, the person issuing them would ask for money. Go to a restaurant to have a family dinner, you’d see the restaurateur making 300% profit.
But when we go to a country where honesty is still in practice, we don’t seem to do anything that we do inside our own country. This matter haunts me all the time. Sometimes, I feel that we’ve reached a point of no return as far as our individual integrity is concerned. And more worrying is that we’re instilling all these characteristics into our children.
Our children know from babyhood that it is possible to get admitted to a school without qualifying in the admission test if their parents pay a big donation. We often blame our politicians for this situation to have become the norm. Yes, of course, it’s their responsibility to keep us honest by upholding honesty in their own lives.
But having said that, the question would always loom: “How much have we done?” Don’t we bring home many stationery items such as pens, markers, printouts, etc, from our workplaces? Many of us always do that. And this is a glaring example of common people’s participation in daily-life corruption.
Isn’t a chicken vendor agreeing to sell his dead chickens at a low price when a restaurateur is asking for them? Aren’t the procurement officers overbilling their offices for personal gain? Isn’t a police sergeant riding his motorbike on the wrong lane, and at the same time filing cases against those who are committing the same crime? Aren’t the deceitful businessmen getting away with the help of people in power?
Everything about Bangladeshis becoming dishonest actually revolves around our sense of extreme greed. There’s a difference between “aspiration” and “greed.” When you aspire for more money, you work better, or you provide good quality products. But when greed is in play, you tend to commit crime, work less, and deliver inferior quality products.
It seems we’re opting for the later. We’re too easily being lured by our greed. If this wasn’t true, then we’d still have our rivers with their original shapes, incidents such as Rana Plaza wouldn’t happen, and flyovers wouldn’t collapse.
But as a nation, how far would we allow these to continue? If unfair means become the norm, the remaining honest bunch also would have to join the bandwagon. We mustn’t forget that greed only caters for the present, not for our future.
