Roll baby roll

As we have been continuously pointing out over the years, unless there is genuine political commitment to establish a robust anti-graft mechanism, the problem is going to get from bad to worse, year after year. The latest report of Transparency International, the global corruption watchdog, only validates our point. Now, Nepal is ranked only behind Afghanistan, a war-ravaged country whose government struggles to ensure law and order even in the capital, Kabul, without the support of foreign forces. Afghanistan as our benchmark, that is what we have come to.



Nepal’s constant slide down the annual index (last year it was ranked 146th; this year, 154th) is sad, even while predictable. Predictable because the big political parties have connived to keep the top anti-corruption body without office bearers for over five years. Predictable because corruption is institutionalized, its root long and deep in state apparatus. Even the political parties, the torchbearers of a democratic system, have been cooking their books for years in their bid to hide the under-the-table donations, reportedly worth billions of rupees.



As the TI report made public on December 1 makes clear, there is no political will to check corruption in Nepal. None. Just about any kind of access to financial records of public institutions and political parties, a public right, is disheartening hard. The bribery of public officials is so rampant that when people go to any public office, they expect to give something to get something back. The billions of rupees in kickbacks in high-value public procurements like aircraft and armored personal carriers purchases is common knowledge.



These factors, all of which go into the calculation of TI’s Nepal score, coupled with the continued political instability and rampant impunity, have dealt a devastating blow to Nepal’s development effort and cruelly stolen even little morsels from poor Nepalis—while their supposed representatives have morphed into money-grubbing fat cats.



It seems no one is accountable to anyone. The prime minister feels empowered to pardon murder convicts. He started well in office, sending a message of austerity though his use of cheap, Nepal-made vehicles and economy-class flying. But post the appointments of his jumbo cabinet, the biggest in Nepal’s history, and a horde of advisors, each of whom has to be paid and looked after on taxpayer money, the PM’s pledge of an austere government sounds like a cheap joke.



Given their tainted pasts, many of his ministers should have been deemed, ipso facto, unfit for public office. In order to make any kind of dent on the country’s ever-rising corruption edifice, the top brass of government and bureaucracies must show genuine commitment to tackling this insidious culture, an unlikely prospect given the stained records of those now running the show. Sad as it may sound, Nepal’s roll down the TI index is likely to continue and no one should be surprised if it soon overtakes even the beleaguered Afghanistan.

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