Corruption is a pervasive and perverted global system from which very few nations are free. It damages a country, is a deterrent to development. Corruption causes loss on an overall public level and to the individual citizen as well.
According to the law, corruption is a punishable crime. However, waste and misuse do not fall under the category of corruption as defined.
Our country has a strong anti-corruption authority, manned by bold and brave officials. But if state wealth and resources are wasted or misused, deliberately or inadvertently; there is no scope to have legal recourse. Losses caused by corruption can be quantified, but there is no method to measure damage caused by waste and misuse. These are insidious termites, gnawing at the innards of society.
China’s communist leader Mao Zedong from the very outset came down hard on waste and corruption. Misuse of state funds was met with severe punishment.
Notwithstanding the corruption in China today, had those initial strong measures not been adopted at the time, China would be worse off than we are today.
Politics and patriotism fill the pages of our newspapers. There is no dearth of people concerned with the towering troubles that afflict our country, such as the multi-million capital flight to Switzerland, Malaysia and beyond. Who has time to think about the petty problems that assail us? Yet the amount wasted and misused in offices, educational institutions and our homes, add up to billions.
Over the last two years or so I took personal initiative to have some young people carry out certain simple surveys of apparently low key issues. These issues may not send the nation hurtling into crisis, yet they cause me pain.
Of envelopes and letters
Those who had worked for the East Pakistan government or for the Bangladesh government in 1972-73, will recall the small envelopes used for government correspondence. Each envelope would be used several times. For example, if a letter was sent from the agriculture ministry to the information ministry, the recipient would re-use that envelope by simply gluing on a slip of paper with a different address and sending it on to, say, the radio. The radio director would file his letter and, in turn, stick on a different address and sent to perhaps to poet Jasimuddin or Shamsur Rahman. They may then have relegated the enveloped to the wastepaper basket, but only after it had thus been recycled many times over. That was the norm of the day.
We import paper and hence it is important that we use the commodity with care. I receive about seven or eight letters a day, mostly invitations in large envelopes, often coloured and sometimes even laminated. I doubt even if developed countries opt for such extravagance, and we are just a lower mid-income country.
Personally, over the past 40 odd years that I have been writing, I have never bought a single sheet of paper. I am most at ease writing on the blank side of letters, press releases, reports, and so on. It saves money too.
I’m not telling anyone to fish out paper from the wastepaper basket, but given the amount of computer printouts that are generated every day, the back of these sheets can easily be used. This would cut down on waste significantly.
Chairs and towels
Bengalis aspire to sit on chairs, rather than the humble rug, stool or bench. And small chairs won’t do, these have to be big, virtual thrones! The average Bengali may be diminutive in stature, but his chair must be large.
I once pointed out such a chair in a government office to a carpenter and asked him how much wood was used to make it. He said two chairs could have been made with that wood. Even if that was not so, at least eight chairs could be made with the wood used in five such chairs. Why the waste of wood when we have such a shortage of timber in our depleted forests?
Bengalis are not satisfied easily. You will note that the back of a government officer’s chair is adorned with a large towel. Nowhere, not in Japan, Iran, Spain, Germany or Scandinavia, does anyone use a towel to cover the back of the office chair. And there is no evidence that a towel on the chair increases efficiency.
Perhaps the towel is handy to conceal little bundles of notes, hiding the wads of money effectively. The finance minister’s budget doesn’t make mention of how much is spent on these towels every year, but surely a modest hospital could be constructed with the annual expenditure of these terry towels.
Hard chairs don’t suit some soft bodies and so cushioned revolving chairs are the order of the day. The officer doesn’t have to twist and turn to speak to people, the chair will do it for him.
During the British rule and Pakistan times, the establishment ministry would specify exactly what size table an officer was entitled to, whether it would be glass top or not and what sort of chair he would use. Now it’s a free country, that too a socialist one. Any officer has the right to chose a massive chair, a glass top secretariat table, a coat hanger, a mirror on the wall if he wants to comb his hair now and then, a towel, cups and saucers, jugs and glasses, whatever he may fancy.
The World Bank, the foreign embassies and other international organisations in Dhaka have offices and function quite efficiently without ornate thrones, sprawling tables and such paraphernalia. Why are these so indispensible to us?
In a country where there is regular load-shedding, electricity is squandered the most. Lights are left on 24/7.
Taps and toilets
About 80 percent of the toilets in government officers are dirty and in a state of disrepair. The faucets ere leaky, and gallons of water are wasted. Yet in some areas of the city, people suffer interminably for a simple pitcher of water.
When Japan emerged from colonial domination to independence, its priority was cleanliness. We may have cleanliness in our dictionaries, but certainly not in our lives. My personal survey shows a pitiful picture of toilets in schools, colleges and universities. Some of the toilets didn’t even have adequate water or bolts on the door. Girls would have a friend keep guard at the door while they used the toilet. What a pathetic situation. The excuse of fund paucity is lame. Even if the students paid just five to ten taka each, the toilets could be in a better shape.
The waste of water and electricity, the extravagance in office decor, all this weaken the nation from within. Economists would do well to calculate if two more nations the size of Bangladesh could be built with the amount of money and resources wasted over the past 45 years in the country.
Along with the drive against corruption, there must also be resistance against waste and misuse. This is imperative if we want to see Bangladesh stand tall as a developed nation.
Source: Prothom Alo
