The damages it has done to the polity are astronomical. The menace of corruption has led to slow processing of files in offices, siphoning off development funds, low quality infrastructures, slow delivery of public goods and services, customs congestion, queues at passport offices, political extortions, ghost workers syndrome, election irregularities, among others. Even the illiterate people recognize the havoc caused by corruption— the funds allocated for their welfare disappear into the thin air. It is estimated that around 30 percent of the funds earmarked for local development get embezzled annually in Nepal.
Corruption Perception Index (CPI)—2009 explicitly reflects perceived level of corruption in Nepal. With a score of 2.3, Nepal has been ranked 143rd among 180 countries assessed in 2009. The score has dropped by 0.4 points compared to 2.7 in 2008. The drop in the CPI score can be assigned to various factors like political apathy for corruption control, political transition, de-facto existence of the anti-corruption agency, poor legal frameworks and weak law enforcement mechanism.
The surge of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in post-1990 era definitely made some endeavors for anti-corruption advocacy and awareness building. But this was not enough. Civil society’s contribution had to be explored in a more broad-based coalition with the state. This is where we failed in the past decade in our efforts to rein in corruption. A motivated and vibrant civil society is a backbone in the campaign against corruption. The state, regardless of whatever strict laws it frames, cannot stamp out corruption by itself. As corruption is elusive, anti-corruption campaign needs to be backed by the civil society and citizenry as well. Otherwise, it will fail the way just as in many African, Latin American and east European countries.
Civil society has become one of the most effective allies of the state in forging anti-corruption coalition in many countries. Even India has successful stories of partnering with civil society organizations from awareness raining to policy formation to monitoring of the implementation of anti-graft legislations. With such coalition approach, India has augmented its capacity to contain corruption in recent decades. The level of empowerment and involvement of civil society in anti-corruption policy formation and implementation is a yardstick to measure the success of partnership approach in any country.
Administrative accountability, transparency, participation, rule of law and prompt service delivery can be achieved more quickly in a country where there is an informed and vibrant civil society. And at the same time, civil society can also involve itself in monitoring the quality and delivery of public goods and services, mobilization of resources and make voices of the common people heard at the policy level. But the activism of the civil society depends on the responsiveness and cooperation of the state as well. To encourage the civil society, the state should accept it as a partner and an intermediary.
Civil society has become one of the most effective allies of the state in forging anti-corruption coalition in many countries. We must follow this in Nepal to fight corruption.
Civil society performs as an intermediary between the state and the people. Voicing social interests, grievances and other genuine popular concerns are some of its functions. Through these functions, civil society can extend policy feedback and pressurize for governance reforms. Such civic supervision and oversight help the state to operate in an accountable, transparent and responsive manner reducing the possibility of corrupt practices.
Countries with successful modalities of anti-corruption mechanism have explored civil society’s role especially in three aspects--awareness building, policy formation/feedback and implementation status monitoring. Successful countries/ and or territories such as Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Malaysia have involved civil society in policy formation and implementation in their attempts to curb corruption through institutional and policy reforms.
But to be blunt, civil society in Nepal has been more limited to awareness building and grassroots advocacy. Its role in formulating and implementing anti-corruption policies and strategies is not yet explored and properly tapped. Corruption, as we know, is so rampant in Nepal that “one sector approach” will not be much effective and bring noticeable impact. As dealing with corruption is a multi-dimensional approach, role of civil society as a key actor should not be underestimated. Rather, fighting corruption must be viewed as a shared responsibility. Experiences have shown that single-agency approach to corruption control in absence of strong partnership with other actors have miserably failed in many underdeveloped countries like Nepal. Otherwise, the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) would have already made a difference in the fight against corruption over the past decade.
Global Corruption Report-2009 puts that people’s trust toward anti-graft agencies in Nepal has withered away in recent years. Decreasing number of complaints at the CIAA has evidenced this fact. The report mentions that corruption opportunities have flourished in Nepal because of the political transition. Bank defaulting alone cost Rs 40 billion to the state coffers. A study in 2005 recorded a total volume of formal trade around 973 million US dollars whereas the informal trade figured around 368 million US dollars because of smuggling through porous border with India. To check such illegal acts and corruption, the state can ally with civil society organizations for their oversight role.
Realizing the civil society’s capacity, the Central Vigilance Commission in India developed an interactive website, which proved a highly positive step in keeping people informed and involved in framing and implementing anti-corruption strategies. Any government willing to combat corruption requires developing a participatory approach that directly involves civil society in formulation and monitoring implementation of anti-corruption strategies and policies. And this is desperately lacking in the context of Nepal in the campaign against corruption.
Participatory method is very crucial in a fight against corruption. Even India has experimented with various civil society participatory models which has triggered noticeable impact on corruption control by improving transparency and accountability. With aims to expedite service delivery and reduce corruption, the Indian government time and again formed a core group with civil society representatives to formulate and monitor policy implementation which yielded amazingly successful results. But, in our context they are less effective due to lack of collaboration, joint monitoring mechanisms and negativist attitude toward the civil society organizations.
Civil society can be partnered with in various ways in controlling irregularities. Civil society can ventilate people’s concerns and ensure their participation in the governance process. Such participation is essential for creating an environment that lends support for democratic involvement of people down from the community while launching anti-corruption campaign. It is proven that an inclusive governance approach deters corruption and malpractices to a greater extent.
Coalition between civil society and state will also help assess the social, political and economic dimensions of corruption and will devise approaches through its involvement in policy formulation, planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of anti-corruption laws and strategies. With such involvement, the state can easily track down and expose corruption in public sector on the one hand, and receive feedback for institutional and policy reforms on the other.
Countries with a vibrant civil society and credible media have been successful in developing merit-based bureaucratic values, institutionalized competitive politics, inclusive and transparent governance process, public accountability and participation. As civil society is a staunch defender of public interests and a watchdog of government policies and activities, it must be encouraged, strengthened and involved in the formation and implementation of anti-corruption legislations and strategies by the state. Such participatory and collective approach can really make a difference in reducing corruption.
There are very few but important concerns for us to mull over in days ahead. How can CIAA function effectively unless the judiciary is equally proactive? How can corruption be fought by the court when the judiciary itself is corrupt? How can corruption be tackled when the legislature doesn’t promulgate stricter laws? How can we be assured that corruption gets controlled without strong political will?
Can we ever expect corruption to be reduced without free media? Is it possible to contain corruption without vibrant and proactive civil society? These are very crucial concerns we need to reconsider while formulating our anti-corruption campaign in coming years. The linkage among them is so indispensable that malfunctioning of any one of these actors badly hampers the performance of other actors. This is what has been a repeated phenomenon in Nepal in the fight against corruption over the past two decades. Thus, it is about time we applied the lessons learned so far and streamlined our anti-corruption drive accordingly to root out corruption, bad governance and corrupt political system.
(Writer is Deputy Director, Good Governance Project, Pro Public.)
pbhattarai2001@yahoo.com
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