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A Mercedes Benz and an expensive vehicle of some other make imported by a private outfit was recently discovered from inside a container reportedly declared by the importer as scrap materials. The authorities of NBR obtained a High Court order and spotted the discrepancy in the declaration of the Importer. Soon after, Customs authorities pound into action. The vehicles are smashed with heavy- duty hammers and all sorts of vicious looking tools often used in street vandalism between rivals of different political factions. The photographs published in the dailies and pictures in the electronic media tell it all. The funniest thing, however, was the presence of the Chairman of the NBR in the midst of it all. I guess here was an opportunity for him for a photo session for the benefit of the public and at the same time help carry his profile- building act yet a little further.
   The chairman says he was not interested in earning revenue for the national exchequer from earnings through such ventures. Very good. We now have a chairman who is sitting on high moral grounds and certainly wishes to make a point of it with the "people at large".
   On the other hand, just consider this: he announced that 20 top taxpayers would be given the status of VIPs. The announcement comes only 48 hours after the Mercedes Benz incident. Why this declaration now? Will the NBR ever publish their names and the vocations of the individuals concerned, alongside the details of the taxes collected, including in the corresponding period? I doubt it.
   As a member of the public, I for one would surely like to have access to information as to how much tax NBR has collected from these high profile individuals who hold the agencies of selling such luxury cars like Mercedes Benz, BMWs, Volvo other vehicles, which are considered expensive, even in the international market. In order to avoid repetition of any recurrence of the nature, why not totally ban the import of all luxury cars? That would be the real test of the moral fibre not just of NBR but the entire nation as a whole.
   The much-talked about office of Ombudsman has become highly illusory, just like the separation of the judiciary from the executive. The recent news that some more months were given to the ruling coalition to "think things over" was indeed mind-boggling. For a middle class member of society like me, always highly spirited yet totally ineffective in all conceivable ways, I keep asking myself, "Who is doing what to whom?"
   The ghost of SAARC seems to have reappeared again. Has it really ushered in any new vistas of cooperation? What a fine high profiled organisation where it is taboo to talk about bilateral issues of any serious consequence. SAARC stagnates and sits with its wings folded while the people of its three major partners continue to suffer. It is ever more difficult to travel between India and Pakistan, between Pakistan and Bangladesh and vice versa. What is the point in the existence of such an organisation which cannot even resolve such basic issues of travel visas between its member countries? Believe you me, in some ways it is easier for a Bangladeshi now to obtain a US visa than to obtain visas for visiting India and Pakistan. SAARC looks more like an organisation of non-cooperation than co-operation. I see no reason for a poor country like Bangladesh to continue with the burden of such a white elephant just because it is its brainchild.
   The cruel lashes of seminars, round table discussions and mat binimoys (exchange of views) dominate the capital city of Bangladesh. It constitutes in talking and talking, between high tea and good lunches, at five star hotels and fancy conference halls. It has become a full time occupation for a number of "intellectuals" and well-placed, well-recognised members of civil society. The deliberations are never heeded to or implemented at any time.
   We are slowly and surely moving into extended cultural festivities, which are making us drift away from the stark realities of life. Brazil has one major festival, a carnival that runs over a week, and yet it is a nation that produces and happens to be one of the wealthy nations of the world today. As much as all work and no play makes one a dull boy, it also works the other way round. As it is, the entire nation comes to a complete halt twice a year during the two Eid Festivals for durations extending to a week or more during each of the festivals.
   Our wealthy and the rich are busy building entertainment centers like complexes, multipurpose water parks and fancy shopping malls. None of them talk of developing industries and bringing about healthy economic activities in the country. They seem to be happy with their continuous acquisitions. Import trade licenses bring in goods that cater only to a section of people.
   The attack on our embassy in Kuwait is a unique incident. It has certainly caused a serious dent to our image all over the world. About a decade back, there was a similar attack on our diplomatic mission in Calcutta with a different dimension. It was alleged that the then visa counsellor was issuing visas to Indian nationals against receipt of financial kickbacks. Nothing happened. Soon after the revelation of the incident, the accused diplomat was in Dhaka and thereafter was never to be seen again (he is now, one hears, living happily with his wife and children in Canada).

An aura of sanctity is descending upon the world’s most powerful men. On Saturday the finance ministers from seven of the G8 nations (Russia was not invited) promised to cancel the debts the poorest countries owe to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The hand that holds the sword has been stayed by angels: angels with guitars rather than harps.
   Who, apart from the leader writers of the Daily Telegraph, could deny that debt relief is a good thing? Never mind that much of this debt - money lent by the World Bank and IMF to corrupt dictators - should never have been pursued in the first place. Never mind that, in terms of looted resources, stolen labour and now the damage caused by climate change, the rich owe the poor far more than the poor owe the rich. Some of the poorest countries have been paying more for debt than for health or education. Whatever the origins of the problem, that is obscene.
   You are waiting for me to say but, and I will not disappoint you. The but comes in paragraph 2 of the finance ministers’ statement. To qualify for debt relief, developing countries must ‘tackle corruption, boost private-sector development’ and eliminate ‘impediments to private investment, both domestic and foreign’.
   These are called conditionalities. Conditionalities are the policies governments must follow before they receive aid and loans and debt relief. At first sight they look like a good idea. Corruption cripples poor nations, especially in Africa. The money which could have given everyone a reasonable standard of living has instead made a handful unbelievably rich. The powerful nations are justified in seeking to discourage it.
   That’s the theory. In truth, corruption has seldom been a barrier to foreign aid and loans: look at the money we have given, directly and through the World Bank and IMF, to Mobutu, Suharto, Marcos, Moi and every other premier-league crook. Robert Mugabe, the west’s demon king, has deservedly been frozen out by the rich nations. But he has caused less suffering and is responsible for less corruption than Rwanda’s Paul Kagame or Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni, both of whom are repeatedly cited by the G8 countries as practitioners of ‘good governance’. Their armies, as the UN has shown, are largely responsible for the meltdown in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which has so far claimed 4 million lives, and have walked off with billions of dollars’ worth of natural resources. Yet Britain, which is hosting the G8 summit, remains their main bilateral funder. It has so far refused to make their withdrawal from the DRC a conditionality for foreign aid.
   The difference, of course, is that Mugabe has not confined his attacks to black people; he has also dispossessed white farmers and confiscated foreign assets. Kagame, on the other hand, has eagerly supplied us with the materials we need for our mobile phones and computers: materials that his troops have stolen from the DRC. ‘Corrupt’ is often used by our governments and newspapers to mean regimes that won’t do what they’re told.
   Genuine corruption, on the other hand, is tolerated and even encouraged. Twenty-five countries have so far ratified the UN convention against corruption, but none is a member of the G8. Why? Because our own corporations do very nicely out of it. In the UK companies can legally bribe the governments of Africa if they operate through our (profoundly corrupt) tax haven of Jersey. Lord Falconer, the minister responsible for sorting this out, refuses to act. When you see the list of the island’s clients, many of which sit in the FTSE 100 index, you begin to understand.
   The idea, swallowed by most commentators, that the conditions our governments impose help to prevent corruption is laughable. To qualify for World Bank funding, our model client Uganda was forced to privatise most of its state-owned companies before it had any means of regulating their sale. A sell-off that should have raised $500m for the Ugandan exchequer instead raised $2m. The rest was nicked by government officials. Unchastened, the World Bank insisted that - to qualify for the debt-relief programme the G8 has now extended - the Ugandan government sell off its water supplies, agricultural services and commercial bank, again with minimal regulation.
   And here we meet the real problem with the G8’s conditionalities. They do not stop at pretending to prevent corruption, but intrude into every aspect of sovereign government. When the finance ministers say ‘good governance’ and ‘eliminating impediments to private investment’, what they mean is commercialisation, privatisation and the liberalisation of trade and capital flows. And what this means is new opportunities for western money.
   Let’s stick for a moment with Uganda. In the late 80s, the IMF and World Bank forced it to impose ‘user fees’ for basic healthcare and primary education. The purpose appears to have been to create new markets for private capital. School attendance, especially for girls, collapsed. So did health services, particularly for the rural poor. To stave off a possible revolution, Museveni reinstated free primary education in 1997 and free basic healthcare in 2001. Enrolment in primary school leapt from 2.5 million to 6 million, and the number of outpatients almost doubled. The World Bank and the IMF -which the G8 nations control - were furious. At the donors’ meeting in April 2001, the head of the bank’s delegation made it clear that, as a result of the change in policy, he now saw the health ministry as a ‘bad investment’.
   There is an obvious conflict of interest in this relationship. The G8 governments claim they want to help poor countries develop and compete successfully. But they have a powerful commercial incentive to ensure that they compete unsuccessfully, and that our companies can grab their public services and obtain their commodities at rock-bottom prices. The conditionalities we impose on the poor nations keep them on a short leash.
   That’s not the only conflict. The G8 finance ministers’ statement insists that the World Bank and IMF will monitor the indebted countries’ progress, and decide whether they are fit to be relieved of their burden. The World Bank and IMF, of course, are the agencies which have the most to lose from this redemption. They have a vested interest in ensuring that debt relief takes place as slowly as possible.
   Attaching conditions like these to aid is bad enough. It amounts to saying: ‘We will give you a trickle of money if you give us the crown jewels.’ Attaching them to debt relief is in a different moral league: ‘We will stop punching you in the face if you give us the crown jewels.’ The G8’s plan for saving Africa is little better than an extortion racket.
   Do you still believe our newly sanctified leaders have earned their haloes? If so, you have swallowed a truckload of nonsense. Yes, they should cancel the debt. But they should cancel it unconditionally.
   This article first appeared in The Guardian

Oh Lord, forgive me for I have sinned! What is worse, I do not think I’ll stop sinning in the near future. I am sure to be sent to purgatory for a long time to come while I look down (or is it up?) at my country burning in the hell of poverty.
   No, I’ve not coveted my neighbour’s wife. Neither have I lied. Nor have I killed, though Gluttony and Sloth might be two of the other sins against my name! I have committed the ultimate sin against my country, against my own conscience – I have bribed!
   Okay, I hear the collective sigh of relief from my wife and the rest of my family. We see corruption so prevalent around us that we have desensitized ourselves against it. Mind you, it is, I think, still an awful crime, as heinous as murder or rape. It is the collective rape of the country’s resources and the murder of her future! And every day, every one of us stands silently by as another part of our being dies.
   Well, the question does arise: Why am I being so self-righteous now? Why did I bribe to start with? Can you believe that the first time I did bribe was to give the government my own money? In the mid 1990s, when I came back after my education with the twinkle of a reformer in my eyes. When I came back with the belief in ideals that one learns in college. I think my parents were so relieved that I did not stay back in some foreign land that they bought me a car! And I soon learnt that to ensure that I had the opportunity to impress the ladies with my mean drive I had to pay road tax and fitness. And, as evident, if proper people in the relevant authority were not paid “speed money” all I could do with my soft top was to sit with the stereos blazing like the sun above in our driveway.
   And since then I’ve done this many times over. To get phone lines. To pay electricity bills. To pay income tax (oh no, I’m getting raided tomorrow!). To get tickets on an airline flight. To have my road swept. To ensure that the VAT authorities did not ask why I was paying so much of it. (For sure, a raid tomorrow!) I have the resolve of a heroin addict now! I want to give up but I don’t know how!
   Prof. Yunus of Grameen Bank in a recent newspaper article enthused about what he would do given the chance of being chairman of the Anti Corruption Commission. Well, good professor, isn’t what Abe Lincoln said once hold true in Bangladesh? Is not the basis of democracy embodied in the tenet that a government is of the people, by the people and for the people? Well, we can wait and say that the government and the opposition will get their acts together and solve this epidemic that is plaguing us. But what do we do when our doctor doesn’t cure us? Do we wait till the last breath hoping for a miracle cure? Surely, it is our choice. We can wait. Or we can act. Let us invoke our powers as citizens of this great country to have our own Anti Corruption Commission. Your dream has come true, Professor Yunus. You are now the chairman of the citizen’s ACC.
   So how does this citizen’s ACC (CACC) operate? Well, basically as the name suggests, common citizens form the CACC. Amongst us there are Bangladeshis who are above the party politicking that plagues us. In the past these “model” citizens have come together to form caretaker governments, they fuel many of the intelligentsia, run many of the successful NGOs. In cahoots with the media the CACC can form a powerful opinion forming body in the country.
   The CACC will operate like an NGO whose main goal is to provide transparency to the operation of the government, quite like election monitors who oversee the smooth functioning of any elections. The CACC’s task is to bring to the notice of everyone that any issue that they cover is above board and corruption free. It is almost like having a quality assurance stamp. The government should welcome this body as they claim that they are honest and say it is priority number one to improve our nation’s image before foreign investors.
   Let us form committees (yes, decisions do get made in those sometimes). Let us divide up the work. Past, Future and Present as it was so nicely put. Let us have our own cells to hear grievances from ordinary citizens who have to pay up or not have any other alternative. Let us have counselling desks that guide us through what to do when we are faced with such dilemma. Let us have investigative cells that probe large deals. Let us join hands with the fifth estate to report the crime. Let us for our own sake act!
   Prof. Yunus, you have shown us the way to break out of poverty with your micro credit programme. But is it not time to address the nation’s macro poverty elevation scheme and rid us of the obstacles of corruption? The nation needs people like to you come front and centre and take charge.
   We need people who have the courage to say enough is enough, and who have the personal credibility to see this through. I promise you that the nation will be ever
   grateful and millions of us will be lining up to be the foot soldiers in this war against bribery. I for one, General Yunus, am reporting for duty.