Anti-corruption campaign of a country may be donor-driven but the experiences to date indicate that donors rarely get engaged in fighting corruption in a sustainable manner. If they do, they are basically confined to ad hoc and sporadic events like (1) providing limited support to anti-corruption agencies, (2) helping to organize corruption perception surveys, (3) helping to draft anti-corruption laws, regulations and policies, and (4) supporting civil society organizations to run anti-corruption awareness campaigns. The underlying theme in these activities is the fixed duration with visible outputs. But the problem is that corruption is an invisible enemy.
There are a number of reasons behind this situation. First, anti-corruption, clean up campaigns take a long time to give visible results. There are no quick fixes or magic bullets to anti-corruption. And donors do not have the time, patience and, of course, the money to commit themselves to such a long drawn, seemingly never-ending process. Donors, like politicians, are interested in short-term, visible results so that they can solicit more funds back home. There is little interest in long-term, nearly invisible institutional building effort to prevent corruption. The preventive actions demand system reform, institution building and capacity development. These efforts cannot be realized within a mandate required by an immaculately drawn logical framework.
Second, engaging in anti-corruption campaigns often drag donors into a controversy. Waging a campaign against corruption, basically, involves taking sides and along with it comes the risks. Anti-corruption activities represent the voices of an opposition. And this is what donors like to avoid. They are interested in no risk, status quo situation. Since they work with the regime, there is no point going against it. Remember how donors in Nepal were confused and disillusioned when Gyanendra took power? In spite of so much noise on donor harmonization and aid effectiveness, some donors pull out their support expressing their displeasure with the takeover; others continued their support as if nothing has happened. Some even rationalized that the pull out only means further hardship to the poor and destitute Nepali people.
Third, there is a catch in donors and anti-corruption drive. A country highly in need of donor support is often turns out to be highly corrupt country. This puts donors into a situation of dilemma. Zero tolerance against corruption and good governance agenda are merely instrumental goals, therefore, they are sacrificed or trade-off with bigger and higher order goals like poverty reduction, peace keeping, disaster mitigation and conflict transformation.
Fourth, there are so many entry points in anti-corruption and good governance agenda. Even the successful lessons learned within an institution in one country may not be replicated to another institution in the same country – forget about the transferability of learning from abroad. And high-flying consultants are baffled by this situation.
Fifth, knowingly or unknowingly, donors themselves indulge in corrupt practices. There is not much attention gone into this area. Big scale corruptions take place in donor-supported projects. However, not much information is coming out probably because people are scared to bite the hand that feeds their mouths. Donors’ anti-corruption preaching has no meaning unless they first clean up themselves. Corruption takes place when (1) there is a big difference between what you say and what you do – when your words do not matc2h your deeds; and (2) when you apply different criteria for self-evaluation and evaluation of others. The behaviors of the donors are most opaque in Nepal. If readers are not convinced about the lack of transparency in donor behaviors just look at the results coming from PEFA assessment released by the World Bank itself. In all of the three indicators used to measure transparency, predictability and control of donor funds Nepal has the bottom level scoring.
Recently, this scribe had an opportunity to participate in a totally “supply-driven” workshop ironically named as “Demand for Good Governance” jointly sponsored by the World Bank, Partnership for Transparency Fund (PTF) and Public Affairs Centre (PAC), held in Kathmandu on 5-6 March. I call this a supply driven workshop because of its hotchpotch arrangement. Including this scribe, most of the participants had last minute invitation. There is also poor representation of the participants in terms of meeting agenda. Even the local WB representatives were conspicuous by their absence. The Indian consultants seems to know all the answers to the problems of governance in Nepal, therefore, consultation with Nepali participants was not their priority agenda in spite of it being called consultation workshop. Attending one and a half day long workshop, it leaves a feeling that the organizers had already made up their minds to tap $3 million from the Japanese Social Development Fund and the World Bank Peace and State Building Fund for the project, to be launched in Bangladesh, Nepal and India (and lo, they call it regional); they were simply here to complete one more assignment what goes by the name of “stakeholder consultation”. The voluntary contributions by a consultant said to have a market rate of $900 per day, flying all the way from their HQ, to the “successful conclusion” of the workshop will soon be realized only when this “supply driven” project on Demand for Good Governance will be launched in Nepal. By the way, the organizers were humble enough to disclose the cost of hosting the workshop after a participant diplomatically pushed for transparency in ones own behaviour. When will the WB learn from its past president who had to resign after being dragged into controversy over the promotion of his girl friend working within?
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
| Next > |
|---|
