But the worst, abjectly self-demeaning part of it is that those who could stem the tide of corruption have done nothing about it, never felt the urge to. By their non-chalance and total inaction they have only reinforced the long-felt suspicion in the public mind that being the beneficiary of a corrupt system they could not be expected to go against it.

All this has become something of a ritual -- the TI releases its annual reports placing Bangladesh atop the corruption pyramid and the government of Bangladesh promptly spurning it without so much as batting an eye-lid!

No sooner had the latest TI report been released, pat came the law minister Mondud Ahmed's rejection; the criteria are 'unacceptable' he contended post-haste. No explanation, nor any suggestion offered as to what could be a better methodology. Health minister Mosharraf Hossain thought the assessment was based on 'wrong information'. There was even a not-so-oblique remark by a spokesman that the poor ranking of Bangladesh owed it to 'yellow journalism'. Perhaps, we should have ranked first on the global listing on blame-shifting and buck-passing.

The governmental reactions to World Bank reports, World Economic Forum assessments and above all, to the TI reports have invariably been squint-eyed and politically motivated. If there be any critical remark or negative reference in their assessments, the government of the day would reject it out of hand and place it at the doorstep of the predecessor government who are in the opposition now. By contrast, positive remarks would be enthusiastically owned up and made a political capital of by the incumbent. In the process, nothing is done to improve the situation and corruption rules the roost striking deeper roots in the government and society.

The bankruptcy of these stock reactions is most poignantly illustrated by the fact that in the governments' vociferous denial of the most corrupt label, it tends to miss out on the fundamental truth that we are a corrupt country after all.

The point is not whether we are first or second or 23rd on the corruption list, the issue is there has been no sincere effort to see a turn-around in the situation. As we chase the mirage of an independent anti-corruption commission and an ombudsman office, corruption queers the pitch of what could be three percent addition to our GDP growth rate.