Corruption in the subcontinent

Anna Hazare has captured the imagination of television audiences' world-wide. However in Pakistan he has captured our hearts and minds and many are wondering if anyone can replicate his movement here. To date only Ansar Burney has presented himself as a possible Pakistani Anna Hazare, though he is unwilling to start the movement before Eid.
Kishan Hazare was born in 1937 to an unskilled labourer. He passed seventh grade but could not continue his studies due to his family's financial hardships, which compelled him to begin selling flowers on the streets in Dadar Mumbai. Later Hazare joined the Indian army as a driver. On 12 November 1965 he was the only survivor of a convoy after a Pakistan air force strike. But what he is most famous for is his contribution to the development and structuring of his native drought-prone, poverty-stricken Ralegan Siddhi village in Parner taluka of Ahmednagar district, Maharashtra. "Hazare reinforced the normative principles of human development - equity, efficiency, sustainability and people's participation and made Ralegan Siddhi an oasis of human-made regeneration in a human-made desert without any inputs of industrialisation and technology-oriented agriculture," Wikipedia notes. Hazare was awarded the Padma Bhushan in acknowledgement of this meritorious service.
Burney, Wikipidea reveals, has a Law degree from Karachi University. He is a vocal pro-democracy proponent and served briefly in prison during military dictatorships. In 1980, he began the "Ansar Burney Welfare Trust", "Prisoners Aid Society", and "Bureau of Missing and Kidnapped Persons". He and his organisation are accredited for securing the release of around 700,000 innocent prisoners from countries all around the world as well as the release of the Pakistani camel jockeys (children of between 2 to 10 years old). Burney was awarded the Sitara-i-Imtiaz in 2002.
There are two major differences between the two men aside from their background: their outreach and previous engagement in anti-corruption drives. Hazare has remained focused on India and his latest anti-corruption drive is India-specific. He began an anti-corruption drive in 1991 in Ralegaon Siddhi through the launch of Bhrashtachar Virodhi Jan Aandolan (People's Movement against Corruption). In the same year he protested against collusion between 40 forest officials and timber merchants - a protest that led to the transfer and suspension of the officials. In 1997 Hazare took his protest to the state level and alleged malpractices in the purchase of power looms by Gholap, who, in turn, on 4 November 1997 filed a defamation suit against him. Hazare was arrested in April 1998, released on a personal bond, and on 9 September imprisoned in Yerawada Jail to serve a three-month sentence mandated by the Mumbai Metropolitan Court. Later, due to public protests, the Government of Maharashtra ordered his release. Hazare then wrote a letter to the then chief minister Manohar Joshi demanding Gholap's removal for his alleged role in malpractices in the Awami Merchant Bank, which led to Gholap's resignation from the cabinet on 27 April 1999.
Burney has no such anti-corruption campaign to his credit to date. In a statement issued to the press Burney maintained that Pakistan is confronting a "dire and painful period in its history, with rampant and continuously growing corruption and terrorism destroying every fabric of our nation and any prospects of a decent future for our children and grandchildren". Few in this country would tend to disagree with this disturbing assessment but then the question is whether Burney has the capacity to attract large crowds nation-wide in support of a cause that is close to the hearts of millions of Pakistanis? The answer lies only partly within the realm of the personalities of the two men and more on the existing situation in the two countries.
There is no doubt that India is economically sound, in marked contrast to Pakistan. India's rising standing in the international community owes partly to its cash-flushed large middle-class and partly to a government with enough liquidity to purchase expensive military/civilian hardware that accounts for Western leaders queuing up to visit India and drooling over the possibility of getting orders needed to provide the necessary impetus to their own recession-ridden economies. It is also generally acknowledged that unlike Pakistan, India's 1991 economic reforms reduced the red tapism that was mainly held responsible for the "institutionalised corruption and inefficiency". It is also well-known that unlike Pakistan the Right to Information Act 2005, requiring government officials to furnish information or face punitive action, has reduced corruption considerably in India.
However at the same time, it is acknowledged that the Indian economy continues to have a large illegal or informal economy like Pakistan. In addition, in 2006, the Swiss Banking Association estimated that India was on the top of the list for black money with 1456 billion dollars stashed in Swiss banks by Indian nationals, thirteen times the country's total external debt. Sonia Gandhi reportedly accounts for about 2.2 billion dollars of this amount. At the same time, a 2005 study by Transparency International (TI) found that more than half of those surveyed had firsthand experience of paying bribe or peddling influence to get a job done in a public office. In other words, corruption is pervasive in Indian officialdom. That one is tempted to conclude without the benefit of similar surveys is probably a reflection of the situation in Pakistan as well, without of course the benefit of a strong economy.
Hazare and his supporters are demanding that the Indian government enhance the ambit of the anti-corruption bill recently passed by the Assembly. His critics maintain that his approach is anti-democratic as he is trying to pressurise the peoples' representatives, who, after all, were voted to take precisely such decisions. Be that as it may, the focus of the Hazare movement is to compel the Assembly to pass a bill with more teeth.
The question is would this be an appropriate demand in Pakistan's context? The Accountability Bill remains pending in the standing committee with little or no progress even after three years. The government, including the Prime Minister, continues to lay the onus of proving a case on the Supreme Court rather than on its investigative as well as prosecuting branch. While the two have capacity issues yet frequent transfers of not only the investigating officers but also the prosecuting officials, has led to the general perception that the government is employing delaying tactics rather than attempting to proactively investigate and bring the guilty to justice on cases involving the political bigwigs or their progeny. In other words, even if a stringent bill is passed by the assembly that has teeth, the implementation would remain in the hands of the government and given its recent record it is unlikely to extend support to the courts by either strengthening the investigative branch or indeed the prosecution branch.
The political fallout of this obstructionist policy has been almost negligible and the punishment for corruption, as repeatedly stated by PPP stalwarts, including the Prime Minister is summed up by the following challenge: "if we are corrupt then the public will not vote for us". Justice, according to this view, is to be provided not by the judiciary but by the people (a view that is not followed by other countries with entrenched democracies) and here the government believes it has two trump cards. First, private channels are aired only in major cities which focus on government failings, while the bulk of the population lives in the rural areas, where only the state-controlled channels are available. And second, the government is relying on the baradari system to win the next general election as well.
Burney's campaign, even if it finds general support in these trying times, is unlikely to change this equation. In Pakistan, a successful anti-corruption campaign is a long term process and must include changing perceptions through higher percentages in our schools and colleges. That no government, neither a dictatorship nor indeed a civilian government, has focused on education ever is evident, reflected by the fact that annual allocations on education remain well below the 2 percent of the GDP proposed by the United Nations, while India spends around 4.1 percent.