How societal factors drive corruption among public officials in Bangladesh

Many years back, there were two BCS cadres in our village. One with a strong academic background had an education cadre and the other with a relatively weak academic calibre preferred administration cadre. 
Most of the people, not only in our village but also in the whole union, would know the latter. He enjoyed a plentiful life. He satisfied the needs and wants of his own, and fulfilled some demands of his relatives and society. His family and relatives remained safe from social and other harassment all the time. He also ended up with wealth extremely inconsistent with his legal income. He did not face any legal consequences for his illegal income. 
Perhaps these are the reasons why our public sector officials indulge in corruption. 
Corruption, in its most commonly understood sense, is demanding money in exchange for services. Corruption emerges mainly from lack of rule of law, failure of governance and political instability. Here I have tried to identify why public sector officials in Bangladesh are involved in corruption based on my observations. 
Without even adequately defining corruption, it can be easily said that it has a serious negative impact on an economy by misallocating scarce resources. Corruption hampers economic growth, aggravates poverty and increases income inequality. 
Many studies around the globe have identified the negative effects of corruption which are statistically important. This means if corruption could be reduced extensively, it would enhance our standard of living.
Corruption disproportionately allocates resources to different units of an economy. Those who are involved in corruption accumulate resources, expanding inequality. 
However, resources of an economy should be distributed through the ownership of factors of production where wages are earned by workers, rent by landowners, interest by capital suppliers and profit by entrepreneurs. In a fair economic system, all these factors earn their equitable return. 
But in a resource-constrained country like Bangladesh, all try to get a share of it. If the country is run by good governance, the resources have to be earned. But in the absence of it, people try to get them through various mechanisms other than competitive ones where resources are distributed through an interaction between demand and supply.

How social expectations influence public officials to commit corruption 

There are several social drivers of corruption. Some illogical expectations of our society from public officials indirectly encourage them to be corrupt. 
Growing up in a poor country, many of us have the dream of owning a car, having a luxurious flat, going on foreign trips and possessing many other things. It is really difficult to get them achieved only by the salary of a public official. 
If government officials are involved in corruption, they can make their long-cherished dreams come true. Those who are obsessed with these dreams indulge in corruption.
If we look at the lifestyle of a corrupt public officer, it is really dreamy. The official buys an abnormally large apartment which is the merger of two or three flats. This is done so that we cannot say that he owns many apartments. 
These officials have very expensive furniture in their houses, large flat television sets and exclusive hanging lights. The kitchen and bathrooms are designed with modern fittings. Children have the latest cell phones just to play games and watch videos. They send their children to expensive English medium schools. Many send their families abroad for higher education and a better life.
On weekends, they go to restaurants with their families. They often go to resorts around the country on vacations. Regular foreign trips are also not uncommon for them. They maintain one or more personal cars as well.

For household activities, they maintain many maidservants – one for cooking, another for cleaning the oversized flat, one more for cleaning the furniture and another for taking care of their kids. 

They do not send their kids to day-care centres. Rather they make their homes day-care centres. 

Their official cars are used to send their children to school, college and university. They remain engaged in daily and weekly shopping. Their drivers receive additional overtime payment as waybill from such misuse of the cars.
During various occasions like Eids, Pohela Boishakh and Durga Puja, they generously present gifts including hard cash to their relatives. It is also a show-off to sacrifice a cow along with some goats during Eid-ul-Adha. 

Although they earn money illegally, they do not mind giving Zakat on it. Their poor relatives and neighbours start communicating with them long before the month of Ramadan to get their shares. 

When some of their relatives and neighbours are faced with financial trouble, they emerge as saviours and rescue them. When guests visit their houses, they are entertained with expensive food. The relatives leave their houses with happy and smiling faces. 

These officials also visit their relatives with expensive sweets, baskets of fruits and other items. They get the highest preference among their kith and kin. If they sometimes fail to attend any social programme, everybody misses their absence.

The relatives also utilise them to go to the hospital, attend marriage and wedding ceremonies, midnight birthday parties and many other programmes. 

A public officer is evaluated by what he has done to the society he belongs to. By using his authority and influence, public officials can do many things for individuals and society. 

For example, how many people he could employ from his locality is an important parameter of his success. People do not bother about ethical aspects in this regard.

They can help get a road sanctioned and constructed. They can help construct bridges and culverts in their areas. They are capable of donating big sums of funds to schools, colleges, madrasas, mosques, temples and other institutions. 

In these ways they become icons. Their children also dream of being such officials in the future. 

When people are opportunistic and corruption goes largely unchecked in the absence of checks and balances, some people will naturally try to indulge in corruption. People have a tendency to spend more when it is done with the money of others. Our public servants do exactly the same. 

How societal pressure can help reduce corruption 

Establishing the rule of law, good governance and political stability can reduce corruption largely. But social values like trust, norms, values and mutual relationships can help reduce corruption. 
One such example can be the pressure from the religious leaders. 
When these corrupt public servants lead a bountiful life, many of their parents being exceedingly religious turn a blind eye to the corruption of their own children although they often talk about the corruption of others. These officials perform hajj after their retirement and hold key positions in their local mosques. 
But imams and their followers do not hate them for their past activities. Everyone remains silent only because they have received donations for their mosques from them. 
The imams do not preach in mosques that donating illegally earned money to mosques does not bring any benefit to the donors from an Islamic viewpoint.  
At the time of inaugurating their new apartments bought with illegal money, these corrupt officials invite Islamic scholars to pray so that they can live there with peace and happiness. 
If the religious scholars would mention in their supplications the importance of honestly earned money, the level of corruption would decrease to some extent. 
If teachers while receiving donations for schools, colleges and madrasas would check the sources of their donations, the magnitude of corruption would decline considerably. If parents and relatives of these officials seriously talked against this corruption, or simply avoided them socially, the scale of corruption would reduce.

Dr Md Main Uddin is a Professor and former Chairman of the Department of Banking and Insurance at the University of Dhaka. 

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and views of The Business Standard.