This blog-post attempts to make a critical analysis of
corruption as is seen in South Asian countries using the cases of Pakistan,
Bangladesh and Indonesia. All three countries are Muslim majority and
developing countries. There are therefore resulting similarities in their
social set up. The three societies place a certain importance on familial
relations and loyalty to groups. The purpose of this write-up therefore is to
look at the way by which the authors of the three posts being analysed,
namely—Ashish Yadav, Isha Bhallamudi and Angitha S M have looked at corruption in the three countries
and to see the possibility of establishing similarities between them.
The paper Syndrome of
Corruption: Oligarchs and Clans looks at corruption in Pakistan. Corruption
in Pakistan is seen through this paper against the backdrop of political power
being concentrated in the hands of a few and governance being constantly
unstable. The institutions in place to redress corruption no longer hold the
trust of the people as corruption runs high in these as well. Those who seek to
fight the corrupt practices of those in power are often violently silenced as
is evidenced by the death of many parliamentarians, journalists and
whistle-blowers in Pakistan.
Corruption in
Bangladesh shows that much like in the case of Pakistan, Bangladesh too
experiences corruption in the form of “undue influence of powerful
individuals”. The author of the paper states that “(U)nlike most developed countries, in Bangladesh corruption is not
restricted to an exclusive elite network but extends across the interactions of
state, market and civil society” which rings true when the corruption in the
country is juxtaposed with that in Pakistan. Much like in Pakistan, Bangladesh
too has experienced corruption where access to justice is extremely difficult due
to weak enforcement of laws, and there are regular allegations of abuse,
including extra-judicial killings by the state apparatus. Civil society,
including media, is very weak and self-censorship is common. Trust in the law
enforcement institutions is almost nearly non-existent. Thus, Bangladesh too
falls into the category of oligarchs and clans as classified by Johnston too.
Although
Johnston places the last country of chosen for this analysis in the category of
Official Moghuls, it still has a place in this analysis as the author of the
paper Indonesia: A Social Perspective of Corruption uses Fukuyama’s concept of social
capital and trust and thus makes it suitable for comparison with Pakistan and
Bangladesh. The author of the paper establishes that corruption in Indonesia is
based upon loyalty to the in-group and not to the larger society. Through this
lens of trust thus we see, that in all the three countries corruption can be
traced to a loyalty to an in-group coupled with weak redressal mechanisms. The
concept of trust in these countries needs to be looked at against the
background of the social and familial relations in these South Asian countries.
The three papers have made a detailed analysis of the corruption in their
countries using multiple theoretical lenses. However, providing a social
background to these cases would lend a certain nuance to their analysis.
Papers
used in this post are:
1.
Syndrome
of Corruption: Oligarchs and Clans by Ashish Yadav
2.
Corruption
in Bangladesh by Isha Bhallamudi
3.
A Social
Perspective of Corruption by Angitha S M
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