The New Conversation

EVERY time you talk about corruption, others throw back aphorisms like revelations. They tell you that corruption is a fact of life. That everyone has a price. That character is nothing but lack of opportunity to do mischief. That even the holiest man will have the urge to clean up an unprotected house. That pure gold doesn't make ornaments. So, if you give one reason why we should fight corruption, others give more reasons why we shouldn't. In our bid to fight the virus, the virus has contaminated our souls.
It's amazing that corruption has become so pervasive, when it's difficult to find someone who hasn't been stained. Hence, we hear the murmur of discontent that the government has gone too far to hunt down corrupt people. We hear that these are the smartest people, the architects of our prosperity, those who have multiplied national revenue and created employment. Only if those people were out of jail, they could take care of the market and control prices in the blink of an eye.
Somehow the ripples of a counter-culture are trying to become waves. There is a silent campaign to justify corruption, a kind of internalisation that nothing is wrong with taking bribes, dodging taxes, stealing public money, practicing fraud and doing all other grotty, naughty things to stay well. There is a silent campaign to remove the stigma of corruption, so that it doesn't look so bad.
The fear is whether the slain monster will regenerate and multiply from the drop of its own blood. It's like that Arnold Schwarzenegger movie in which the enemy is dissolved into a puddle of molten metal, and then the liquid quickly gathers to morph the enemy into his original form. Believe me, if you listen to the New Conversation you will start worrying whether corruption is growing back at a pace faster than it has been set for eradication.
One thing has happened though, which is important. In so much talk about corruption, we have made it a household word. It has been repeated so many times that the word has lost its obnoxious meaning like a fabric is faded after many a wash. As a matter of fact, corruption is probably the most-spoken word in this country after two other words: birth and death.
How will future generations react to this word? Will corruption be a big deal many years from now? Will it shock our children to know that their elders are corrupt? What will it mean to them? Will they feel ashamed? Will they learn about it in the classroom like today's children learn about sex?
If we look at it, corruption is no more appalling than biology, when the lurid details of male and female bodies are explained in a scientific manner. Perhaps corruption unravels the darkest secrets of human psyche. Perhaps it's the natural reflex of human mind under material pressure.
I am sure behavioural scientists will agree that human condition and human disposition are preconditions for each other. What a man does to his environment is what his environment does to him.
Carl Jung said it in different words. "What you resist persists," he stated. Corruption is a vice because it's a matter of resistance. Our prevailing sense of virtue refuses to accept it, which is also the same reason why it refuses to go away. To repeat Carl Jung, corruption persists because we resist. It exists because we expound it.
The New Conversation, therefore, demands that it's futile to resist corruption, which is as old and inalienable as human instincts. From the dawn of mankind until the last star falls from the sky, human beings will remain flawed in body and soul. They will remain weak in fervour for the same reason they are weak in flesh.
Hence, we see the paradigm shift. We no longer mind a speck of smut in a bowl of milk. Hence, nothing is lost when character is lost, something is lost when health is lost, and everything is lost when money is lost. Hence, a company is known by the man it keeps. In all, there is a growing pressure to accommodate corruption, to lower the bar of our indignation for basic instincts.
These are the tell-tale signs of reverse evolution, when civilisation has crossed its peak and man is returning to monkey business. Civilisation is all about refinement of the irrational, science and art geared to make the cave-dwelling bipeds into sophisticated animals. That sophistication is meant to be both internal and external, both in style and substance, thought and action, character and composition.
In the New Conversation, there is a growing leniency towards corruption. One man, who plundered a national corporation, is praised for his entrepreneurship, that even though he had earned the seed money by unfair means, he had the talent and foresight to invest and grow that money into a fabulous fortune. In some cases, there are kind words for the children of corrupt families, that they aren't to blame for the sins of their parents. It's openly said that corruption is ineradicable.
The trend is, therefore, to dilute the defamation, to corrupt corruption with undue admiration. Some people even go as far as giving scientific explanation mixed with historical realism that corruption is an inherent human tendency and greed is the mother of all material progress. It isn't important how the money is earned. What is important is how the money is spent.
That, I must say, remains one more battle of our Independence War. The New Conversation is growing from clamour to chorus, trying to introduce a new wisdom that sounds like an Orwellian doublespeak: Corruption is wrong, but honesty is worse. The current campaign against corruption is but an undertow in a surging tide.
It isn't enough to throw people in jail, if we fail to mobilise zero tolerance against corruption, that any amount of it is too much. Why? If you give corruption an inch, it takes a whole yard.

Mohammad Badrul Ahsan is a columnist for The Daily Star.