May 26, 2012
Jamil Nasir

We should not confuse extortion with bribery, wrote Jeremy Pope, one of the founding members of the Transparency International while commenting on my article titled ‘Corruption as agency problem’. Extortion is a crime and the victim is a common man who is compelled by an extortionist to pay money, he further commented. I fully subscribe to the views of Mr Pope that extortion is a crime. In fact, extortion carries a power relationship between the extortionist and the victim. Power may be physical or it may emanate from the misuse of some legal authority.

For example, gangsters in Karachi who deprive the innocent citizens of their valuables, or collect money from the shopkeepers and businessmen, or indulge in land grabbing, or demand ransom apply physical force or threat thereof to meet their nefarious designs. It is simply through the use of physical force that such gangsters extort money from their victims. On the same analogy, the public officials who do not move unless bribed, are in fact extortionists as their act is similar to those of gangsters with the only difference that they are misusing the authority given to them under the law rather than applying the threat of physical force.

Basically, Jeremy Pope had raised the point about the demand side of corruption. In the demand-driven corruption (which is extortion) the person who is authorised for doing a certain job demands money for the service which a citizen is legally entitled to. The person who is paying is not doing so to strike a big business deal, contract or commercial transaction. He is paying (element of willingness is not there) just for expediting the provision of service, securing the issuance of a driving license, speeding up an administrative process, getting signatures on the customs documents, registering an FIR in the police station, or obtaining a copy of the court’s order from the court’s official. Such bribery (extortion) is given various names like facilitating payments, speed money or democratic corruption in the literature on corruption. It is generally a paltry amount but implications are grave. It erodes the confidence of the people in the state and its institutions.

The tolerance for such small payments emanates from various sources. First, the public employees are lowly paid and the state in a way compensates for the low salary by closing its eyes to such extortion. It is a common observation that peons, sepoys, court officials, and stenos etc openly demand money from the public and even the honest officers find themselves helpless to stop such extortion by the low-paid public employees. This tolerance has got another source i e small expenditures of the offices which are sometimes met out of such money as funds allocated in the budget for the operational expenditures of offices are generally very small compared with the requirements.

Second, cultural aspects are also involved. ‘Baksheesh’ is a very old practice in the subcontinent, so the cultural norms have given a type of acceptance to such corruption. The cultural approach to corruption postulates that corruption stems from the cultural norms that emphasise gift giving and loyalty to family (extended family) instead of rule of law. Third, we are generally oblivious to the devastating effects such type of corruption has on the legitimacy of state, governance and various economic variables.

If such payments are not discouraged, these can turn out to be a big extortion. The person who receives such money generally does not have much power of discretion in decision making but he is in a position to control or at least obstruct the procedure due to spoken or unspoken expectations of payment. A police constable may stop an innocent person on the road (if he is not riding a luxury car) for no fault and harass him for extorting money. A court official may not put your case timely to the judge to prolong the judicial process which may suit the other party.

Thus the facilitating payments are a type of extortion. Besides having damaging effects on society and governance, such payments promote a culture of legal impunity and non-adherence to the law. Such corruption is generally facilitated by opaque procedures, overregulation, undue restrictions and prohibitions. So, there is always an inherent incentive to create lengthy and cumbersome procedures. In the long run, public service delivery can become totally inefficient if this phenomenon continues unabated as the officials may not move unless paid for facilitating the provision of such service.

The endemic corruption has social costs as well. It encourages a culture of getting rich overnight. Trust in the norms like hard work and meritocracy, which are the foundations of development in the society, is eroded as has happened in our society. Thus corruption leads to an unequal and unjust society, inequitable distribution of wealth and impacts the poor the most. Thus the difference between facilitating payments and extortion becomes blurred with the passage of time. A culture of unaccountability takes root and people’s trust in the legal, administrative and judicial procedures and systems weakens.

Thus the point raised by Mr Pope that bribery is extortion and impliedly we should not hold the poor chaps responsible for their being party to such an act is relevant. But we should not miss the supply-side of the problem in our narrative on corruption. Big scams where commissions are paid, kickbacks are received and ill-gotten money is funnelled to safe havens are certainly the situations where we need to tackle the problem from the supply side. In such transactions, both parties to the crime are benefited at the expense of the government exchequer. It is only the people of the country who are the final losers. So the point is that we need to approach the corruption problem both from the demand as well as the supply side.

Tackling endemic corruption is not an easy a task. First of all, it is the leadership that matters. It is better to fix the roof first for proper house cleaning. Honest and dedicated leaders who have unflinching commitment to the cause of corruption control are a must. It is the top leadership who needs to set an example as cultural patterns flow from the top. It is also required that the action against corruption should be credible in the eyes of the people.

For example, ‘fry some big fish’ is the strategy which has been adopted in some countries but due to lack of credibility, the whole exercise ends in fiasco as the corruption agency, if not fully independent from government control, is used to discredit the opponent political leaders or buy their loyalties. “Frying the big fish” can turn out to be good strategy if the prosecuting agency is believed to be credible and independent, and the government shows its commitment by catching the fish first from its own pond and fry it.

Transparency and access to information are the other requisites for controlling corruption. People, especially the civil society, need to be engaged in the fight against corruption. The public sector organisations should abandon the tribal mode of thinking which emphasises that a person belonging to the tribe (for example to a particular service group or organisation) should be protected even if he is found involved in corruption. The organisations should put in place effective corruption control mechanisms. The processes, procedures and rules which become major sources of corruption need to be redesigned. Improving the legal frameworks for reducing time to conducting the business in the public sector and administration of justice, and enactment of whistle-blowing legislation may be important areas to work on, for reducing corruption.

The writer is a graduate from Columbia University with a degree in Economic Policy Management. Email: jamilnasir1969@gmail.com
-The News