The non-issue of corruption

Pakistani politics is full of paradoxes. Political rhetoric doesn’t always match voting patterns, and ideologies that hold phenomenal street power do not often get electoral support. As an example, it is easier for a religious party like the Jamaat-e-Islami to hold a rally with a million people on the streets than it is to get a million people to vote for them in general elections.
Corruption is another such issue that gets a lot of space in the media and public discourse, but almost never gets to dictate voting outcomes during the elections.
Along with other important issues such as extremism, poverty, and illiteracy, corruption is a real problem in Pakistan. Large scale corruption in government contracts and projects adds pressure on the already limited resources of the country, while small scale corruption by street level bureaucrats adds to the problems faced by people in their everyday lives. Pakistan ranks at 126 out of 175 countries on Transparency International’s corruption index for 2014, and loses almost $25 billion each year to corruption according to some estimates.
With the emergence of media and political parties such as Imran Khan’s PTI, the debate around corruption is not confined to drawing room discussions anymore and has taken centre stage in the national narrative in recent years. But corruption still does not become an important issue for most voters in Pakistan and the average voter seems to be more interested in local issues of caste, biradari, police, and patwari than in corruption.
Let’s take the political economy approach to understand this indifference in the majority voters toward corruption. Given this perspective, the reason why voters don’t care about corruption is simply because it’s not their money! Like most societies in the post-modern era, Pakistani society is divided into three broad categories based on income: the elite, the middle class, and the poor.
Politics is expensive, so it is mostly the rural and urban elite who contest the elections. On the other hand, the poor have the most important voting impact in elections as they are the majority group with almost 60 percent of the population living under $2 a day, according to the United Nation’s Human Development Index. Interestingly enough, the elite and the poor do not pay taxes. The poor because they do not earn enough and the elite due to poor tax collection mechanisms or by bribing tax officials or gaining tax breaks through lobbying.
The case of the middle class is more complex and diverse as far as tax behaviours are concerned. The middle class can be divided into two sub-groups: the salaried and the self-employed. The self-employed traders and shop owners are as good as the elite in evading taxes through collective bargaining or bribing. It is, hence, only the salaried middle class that pays taxes to the state due to source deductions by their employees.
The salaried urban middle class consists of bureaucrats, military officers, judiciary, and people working in banks, media, cellular companies, multinationals, and other large private enterprises. Given the nature of these professions, the salaried middle class sets the national discourse but does not have a major impact on voting owing to relatively low numbers with only 5-6 percent of Pakistan’s population falling under this category.
So this is how the story goes: the salaried urban middle class pays taxes, which are controlled directly by the elite as the elected representatives and indirectly by the poor as the voters. When in power, the elite politicians benefit from corruption by evading taxes as well as squandering national wealth for their personal economic gain. This money helps them finance future elections and keep their poor electorate happy by providing jobs, constructing roads, installing utility services, and protecting them against police and lower bureaucracy (eg the patwaris).
The issue of corruption, thus, is a problem only for the vocal but minority salaried urban middle class of Pakistan. The rest of the population is a beneficiary of the system – at least in the short run. Having said that, the middle class is not fair in building the anti-corruption narrative either. While politicians are involved in corruption, the bureaucracy and military are not too far behind either.
It is awfully difficult for politicians to engage in corruption at any level without corroborating with the bureaucracy, while corruption charges against several retired military generals have been proved in courts. Still the national rhetoric is lopsided against politicians such as Asif Zardari and Raja Pervez Ashraf who represent the rural elites and masses.
On the other hand, there is lesser acrimony against urban political parties such as the PML-N, and even lesser against the bureaucracy, judiciary, or the armed forces since these groups are mostly composed of the salaried urban middle class itself. In addition, the anti-corruption rhetoric does not include lower level corruption which impacts the masses through street level bureaucrats such as police, patwaris, and lower courts.
If this view is correct, then the menace of corruption can be tackled only if the salaried middle class takes it upon itself to actively engage in anti-corruption measures. Corruption is a social problem that needs to be addressed in the socio-political arena instead of using high handed post-hoc measures such as the National Accountability Bureau, which are often found to be ineffective.
As a first step, the middle class should include their own elements in the anti-corruption rhetoric. They should also put equal emphasis on lower level corruption faced by the masses. The salaried middle class should apply pressure on the government to include traders, shopkeepers, and members of the rural and urban elite into the national tax net.
A broad support base will help generate the political will required to deal with a widespread social problem like corruption. Until that happens, the anti-corruption rhetoric of middle-class dominated parties such as the PTI will fail to attract mass support and these forces will continue to work from outside the mainstream political space.
The writer is a lecturer of Public Policy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA. Email: obedpasha@yahoo.com."