Illegal accumulation of wealth by exploiting government offices and by engaging in shady businesses, or using bribery as a clever mechanism to slip away from punishment or to get work done and to expedite business deals, are nothing new in Bangladesh.

These tactics have always existed in various forms and shades. Therefore, it is quite easy to see the recent revelations of the ill-gotten wealth of, among others, Lutfuzzaman Babar, Sheikh Selim, and Osman Gani, as another chapter in the Bangladeshi history of plundering and bribery. But there are radical departures from earlier trends in these exposés of mind-boggling looting of national wealth.

As late as the 1990s, the magical denomination for illegal wealth was the lakh (roughly fifteen hundred American dollars at the current market rate): One lakh to a police commissioner to derail a murder case; five lakhs to a government bureaucrat to secure a construction deal, bypassing the lowest bidder; or ten lakhs to buy the party nomination for parliamentary elections.

If a bit of cynicism is permitted, these amounts, when converted into dollars, are actually not that spectacular in the global perspective!

But now, the grand Bangladeshi denomination for illicit business or transaction has risen to a mind-paralysing height: the crore ( or roughly one hundred and fifty thousand dollars), assuming that the monthly salary of a mid-level government official is in the vicinity of ten-fifteen thousand taka (roughly two hundred dollars).

According to media sources, the former state minister, Babar, with the blessing of his Don, Tarique Rahman, originally demanded one hundred crore taka from the tycoon father of an alleged killer in exchange for his (the son's) flight from justice. That is fifteen million US dollars!

Forget Bangladesh, this is a stunning bribe even in a super-rich country! As part of a larger deal, three million dollars were delivered to Babar, and the murderer found his refuge in London. Puzo, wherever you are, take notes.

The disgraced Chief Conservator of Forests Osman Gani's loot from devouring the forests, and the strategic positioning of his cronies, also pierced through the gilded ceiling of crores. The chart of lakhs is simply inadequate to map his evil empire that fed on the very forest he was appointed to protect. The enormity of Gani's appetite can only be measured in crores. Crore is hip, lakh is old-fashioned!

The next aspect, debatable perhaps, in the crime spree is the sheer psychological detachment of the perpetrators from their criminal acts. The scale of their political or economic exploitation is so massive, and the flow of illegal wealth is so automatic and effortless, that they can barely understand the nature of their illegality.

When your cronies, with a few threatening phone calls and macho visits, can generate three million dollars on your behalf, you neither have the time to be morally introspective nor have the desire for it.

The easiness of incessant flow of cash can, and will, desensitise you to the crimes that you so nonchalantly commit and the sufferings you perpetuate. Psychoanalysis: One continues the crime, without at all understanding the severe negative effects of that crime, while relishing the bounties the crime produces and systematising the illegal act as natural right.

This is why Babar burst into tears in the court after hearing the order for his second four-day remand. If he had any grasp of reality, he would have expected, even if remotely, his deserved legal troubles which tears could not mitigate. Babar's tears are not the result of his guilty conscience, but of his complete and convenient self-removal from the reality of his tyranny.

Same was with Tarique Rahman, whose tears in the court revealed his total inability to foresee the possibility of his end! The slightest fall from their megalomaniacal perch reduces them to crying children. I am sure Osman Gani was also teary-eyed when arrested.

Another new trend in the criminal underworld is the complete familial complicity in the plunder. The wife of the corrupt government bureaucrat, the marauding politician, or the crooked businessman is now a protagonist in the crime stories.

In classic Bengali films and literature, the unsuspecting wife's ethical advice was the last chance for the corrupt official to redeem himself. Gone are those golden days of naiveté! In fact these days, in many cases none other than the wife meticulously oversees the nitty-gritty of the criminal syndicate.

Osman Gani's wife pulled the strings that held Gani's forest-gobbling empire neatly in place. A large number of shrewd, money-grabbing wives have recently violently shattered the myth of passive housewives on the sideline. They are now master puppeteers themselves, balancing their husbands' puppets and ensuring their show's unchallenged continuation and profitability.

The sons and brothers are not to be outdone either. Saifur Rahman's son, Hannan Shah's son, and many other sons are key players in the clandestine money games that haunt Bangladesh.

Apocalyptic as it may sound to the dogged optimist, it appears as if criminality has plagued the entire body of Bangladesh. The veins, the blood, and the mind are all polluted.

Shafi Sami's recent futile attempt to sideline the CRP's valiant founder, Valerie Taylor, and her fight against paralysis among common folk, bordered on insanity. Just as cancer requires lengthy treatment, Bangladesh's social disease needs a similar, arduous cleansing process. Simultaneous reform in the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the state is a must, so that the basic democratic concept of nobody being above the law is guaranteed.

But I would like to propose a long-term project. How can we reinvent a sense of shame -- lojja -- in our national character and in our social life? How can we shame -- in non-legislative, non-judicial ways -- those who recklessly indulge in illegal pursuit of money and power?

We must also create alternate, socially driven systems of shaming, embarrassing, mocking, humiliating, isolating, and confronting those nirlojjo who amass wealth illegally at the expense of the people and the nation.

The journalists in Bangladesh have taken a great stride toward this goal of banishing the shameless from public life. But the news media alone will not be sufficient for shaming the shameless.

In our educational curricula at all levels, in literature, poetry, films, drama, music, photography, design, and all sorts of public fora, we have to be relentless in waging a war against the corrupt, as we also champion our honest and dedicated heroes.

But, more importantly, we also need to buttress our national consciousness with a psychology of shame, not just by throwing it at the corrupt person as a humiliating tactic when his criminal deviance is exposed, but also by internalising it as a self-regulatory impulse.

From Freud to modern psychologists, shame has been discussed as a premier component of social management, and a nation's self-civilising process. We all know the classic (alas, rarely experienced these days) Bangla expression for this psychology -- bibeker dangshon, or the sting of the conscience.

Ironically, of all the people, it was Osman Gani's hapless mother who epitomised the sting of the conscience. Upon hearing of her son's monumental crime-fest, Gani's ashamed mother uttered: "O mother earth, split apart and let me in!"

Dr. Adnan Morshed is Assistant Professor, School of Architecture and Planning, The Catholic University of America, Washington, DC.