Corruption is often discussed as envelopes stuffed with cash, commission cuts, or high-profile scandals. Public discourse in Nepal has become so saturated with cases of bribery, embezzlement, and political patronage that corruption has come to be understood primarily as a financial crime. But there is another invisible form of corruption that may be even more damaging.
Real-life examples of this invisible corruption include reporting far more time than necessary to complete a task, using working hours for unrelated purposes, and interrupting others by assigning unnecessary tasks. It is the corruption of delay—the endless waiting, unexplained deferments, the familiar “come tomorrow,” the missing file, the unreturned phone call, the officer who is “out for a meeting,” the week-long wait for a signature that takes fourteen seconds, or the month-long processing of a document that should be issued instantly.
These forms of corruption do not appear in audit reports, nor do they make headlines or provoke parliamentary debates. They leave no trace in government ledgers. Yet they may be the single greatest burden on ordinary Nepalis, especially the poor and voiceless.
Delay as a Currency
Think about how many hours, days, or even weeks ordinary citizens lose navigating bureaucracy. A simple task—such as obtaining a citizenship certificate, renewing a passport, or verifying a land document—can require multiple visits to government offices. Lines are long, lunch breaks are unpredictable, and officials may be “on the way” for hours.
Bureaucratic delay is not always incompetence. Very often, it is deliberate. In a system where public servants hold discretionary power and citizens are made to feel dependent, delay becomes a tool of control and a currency for extracting bribes. A file that moves faster is seen as a favour; a stalled file becomes leverage.
Reforming Anti-Corruption Legislations
This is why anti-corruption campaigns that focus only on financial wrongdoing miss a large part of the picture. The currency of corruption in Nepal is not only money—it is also time. When an officer tells a citizen to “come back later,” they are not merely being slow; they are signalling that time can be traded, negotiated, and monetised. The message is clear: your time has no value unless it is paid for.
The rich can bypass delays. The poor, however, have only time to trade, making them disproportionately vulnerable. For a daily wage earner, a single wasted day at a government office is a meal lost. For rural citizens who must travel long distances, delay means transport costs, lost productivity, or an unaffordable night’s stay in the city. For women, who shoulder most unpaid care work, bureaucratic delay is doubly coercive—stealing both income and household time.
Thus, corruption expressed as delay is not merely an inconvenience; it is a structural driver of inequality.
The Economic Loss We Don’t Count
Nepal’s economic debates rarely acknowledge the invisible toll of waiting, yet the corruption of time quietly drains the nation’s potential. Months-long delays in registering businesses stall investments before they even begin, while infrastructure projects crawl forward under layers of procedural red tape, inflating costs and draining public resources.
Even routine services, slowed by bureaucratic inertia, weaken the energy and productivity of the workforce. Unlike stolen money, this theft of time leaves no clear footprint. No auditor general tallies the countless hours citizens spend waiting in lines. In Nepal, time itself has become a currency of corruption—and every wasted day is a cost the nation will never regain.
E-governance is considered a major weapon against corruption. But digital systems alone cannot fix time theft. In fact, they can create new spaces for delay—websites that don’t load, portals that crash, and online forms that redirect citizens back to the physical offices they were meant to avoid. Without accountability, digitalisation merely shifts the bottleneck from one counter to another screen. This is reflected in a UN e-governance report, which ranks Nepal 119th out of 193 countries with a score of 0.5781—lagging behind most South Asian nations in electronic service delivery.
Perhaps the most troubling aspect of time-based corruption is how normalised it has become. Citizens expect to wait. They anticipate difficulty. They arrive early, prepared for inefficiency. They carry extra documents “just in case.” They mentally budget multiple visits for a single task. Waiting has become part of our national identity.
This normalisation erodes democratic trust. A state that cannot respect the time of its citizens cannot earn their respect.
The Paradigm Shift
Nepal cannot afford to ignore this invisible corruption any longer. Addressing time-based corruption requires a multi-pronged approach. First, strict time-bound service standards, enforced by independent oversight, can make delays accountable. Second, process simplification and procedural audits can identify unnecessary steps that prolong approvals, ensuring bureaucracies serve citizens rather than obstruct them. Third, citizen grievance and feedback mechanisms—from suggestion systems to public reporting of chronic delays—can build pressure for efficiency and accountability. Fourth, targeted capacity building and incentive programmes for civil servants can reward efficiency rather than mere compliance.
Learning from international best practices is crucial. Azerbaijan’s “One-Stop Public Service Shop” model, for example, improves coordination among service providers and incorporates an “exit poll” system to continually improve service delivery based on citizen feedback. Similarly, India’s “Right to Services Law” guarantees time-bound delivery of government services, promoting transparency, efficiency, and accountability.
Evidence from governance studies shows that when bureaucracies are evaluated on both speed and transparency, citizens experience fewer delays and greater trust in public institutions. By combining structural, cultural, and procedural reforms, Nepal can transform its bureaucracy into a tool of progress—not a silent engine of corruption.
