In today’s world, corruption is a major challenge facing states and societies the world over. It is certainly a huge issue that is weakening the overall structure of Pakistan. Corruption in Pakistan is not just about people stealing money; it is about an unfair distribution of resources amongst people in positions of power and their cronies. Corruption, in fact, is a part of crony capitalism, which has a serious negative impact on a society. It creates greater social differences and inequalities that make a society unstable. It is also about misuse of authority and lack of accountability. Accountability does not come from national accountability bureaus, but is an ongoing process, which checks misuse of authority and eliminates inept politicians. This is a huge gap in our society. Therefore, it is necessary for us to fight the menace in our country and the best way to eradicate this menace is through character building of our youth who are future leaders of this country.
Old minds are very difficult to change; we have to focus on youth. By focusing on adults, you may not achieve the desired results, so we have to focus on our future leadership. You cannot and will not change the mindset of the political leadership. Politicians feel they are only accountable to their voters in their constituencies, so there is a need to focus on change there. If people will be against corruption, they will surely choose honest and competent persons from themselves rather than typical feudal mindsets. We have to bring this change for our future generations and the first and foremost thing that we need is the political will to achieve this milestone, which is lacking at present.
Adoption of a three pronged-strategy is the need of the hour to fight the menace. First, the state functionaries and societal groups and, holistically, their members must join hands in fighting the menace of corruption through character building of youth. It is important to understand that corruption does not grow on trees but is part of our attitude. As individuals, how many times is it that we question the source of resources that are used or exhibited by our friends and family? Let us admit that there is something fundamentally wrong with our value system that today condones instead of condemns corruption. A greater concerted effort has to be launched to re-think and redraw our social and moral values.
Prevention, in fact, is the second and most vital strand of the anti-corruption drive. The problem has to be nipped in the bud before it begins to have an impact. One way of doing so is to streamline the existing regulatory framework and make it more responsive to preventing corruption. Almost all laws have an indemnity clause that aims to protect the corrupt by giving them a huge margin of the benefit of the doubt. This clause basically means that once a decision goes bad those responsible can claim that they took the action in good faith. Take a look at any law in the country and it becomes obvious that those in positions of power draft it for comfortable manipulation. There is very little responsible discretion and the perspective of stakeholders, especially the general public, is barely represented. A lot of room is left for the authority to implement, not implement or re-interpret the rules to suit their interests.
There is also the problem of lack of accountability and transparency in the regulatory mechanism in all departments and segments of the government. The 18th amendment to the 1973 Constitution calls for ‘access to information’. However, the law needs to be constructed to allow for greater transparency of the public sector and the government at large. The fact of the matter is that to make the country function for the people the laws will have to become supportive. This means building state capacity to fight financial mismanagement and misuse of authority.
The National Accountability Bureau (NAB), the primary anti-fraud organisation of the state is trying to address the problem by creating awareness and working towards prevention of corruption. Character building can be done in many ways like changing the syllabus from Montessori to higher study level. At lower levels by adding anti-corruption lessons and themes in the programme of study and at university level, graduate and postgraduate levels, anti-corruption projects and theses can be written. Another way to reduce this melanoma is to make students aware, to make a code of conducts for themselves, for their school and for their home. Anti-corruption societies can also be formed at district level by engaging local government in this drive.
A sustainable conducive environment for awareness and prevention of corruption is the need of the hour so that we can eliminate this menace from our society. This conducive environment can be created at home, schools, colleges, university level, offices and everywhere. It seems that we have a deficiency of counseling. It is very difficult to make people understand that what they are doing is wrong because this menace has penetrated in our day-to-day affairs, so much so that people feel corruption is their right. We have to touch ethical points of view and create an abhorrence regarding this cancer. Another thing that is also necessary is counselling of teachers. There should be compulsory five minutes in every lecture of 45 to 50 minutes in which teachers should talk on moral and social values. What we lack at present in our educational institutions is extracurricular activities like literary meetings and formation of oriental societies. These activities should be revived because they happen to be very helpful in creating awareness among the youth.
The writer is working as media and public relations officer with NAB. He tweets @irfanchaudhri and can be reached at [email protected]
Note: The views presented in the article are the writer’s own and do not represent NAB