The Cancer Of Corruption In Sri Lanka
Corruption is defined as the “abuse of entrusted power for private gain”. The yet unresolved bond scam saga in which too many notables, including the prime minister, are alleged to have involved highlights the extent to which this abuse has taken place at high levels. There is an old saying in Tamil, “Arasan evvali kudikalum avvalip” meaning, the monarch’s way is the subjects’ way. In the case of Sri Lanka, it is not the ordinary subjects but the state functionaries that adopt their leaders’ way. If the allegation against the prime minister is proved then from the prime minister, ministers and their deputies to public executives and right down to the petty clerk corruption has become a way of life in the blessed country. Nothing moves upwards or downwards through public administration without bribing someone to get something done. The private sector on the other hand cannot survive without transacting with the public sector at some point and at that point corruption has its corrosive impact on the private sector too. Ultimately corruption becomes pandemic.
There may be a few honest politicians and officials but they are fast becoming an endangered species. If this state of things is called good governance or Yahapalanaya one shudders to think what would be the shape of bad governance.
Transparency International’s 2015 Corruption Perception Index lists 167 countries with their index ranging from 0 (utterly corrupt) to 100 (very clean). Sri Lanka has an index of 37 in 2015 deteriorating from 40 in 2012 and holding 83rd position. One does not know how exactly this index is computed. Yet, it is not a pleasant rank. It is the greed of the have lots and poverty of the have nots that feed corruption. As Professor Ali Mazrui wrote in his Cultural Forces in World Politics, not only power but even powerlessness corrupts and “absolute powerlessness can corrupt absolutely”.
Economically, the greed for unceasing accumulation of the have lots naturally leads to an equally unceasing decumulation of the have nots, and beyond a point when honest means of accumulation exhausts itself dishonesty takes over. Even the have lots have to resort to dishonest means to prevent decumulation. This is what corruption has done to the Sri Lankan polity.
The question is how to stop this cancer. In the current political climate changing governments is not going to solve the problem because the so called alternative government has been proved at least equally if not more than corrupt as the present one.Corruption, in a sense, has become systemic and it is tolerated even by the international managers of globalization and free markets. The major political parties have committed themselves to operate within the parameters of this dominant global paradigm. As long as the ruling regime agrees to abide by the dictates of the IMF and World Bank corruption will be frowned upon by the managers but will be tolerated as a price to pay for the durability of the system. In an indirect way their toleration encourages corruption.
