REVOLUTiON may produce a picture of a sudden eruption but its plan and preparation is always a protracted one. Revolution cannot be triggered by asking people to join in, rather it demands a deliberate planning up to minute details and execution through media manipulation followed by sporadic but planned physical action. similarly, anticorruption revolution cannot be conducted by asking people to join in; it has to be planned and executed by professionals starting from psychological warfare, media or motivational experts down to the employment of the law enforcing agencies.

if our ACC really means to conduct a successful anti-graft revolution, it has to repeat the history of revolution, which brought dynamic changes in the field where they were launched. Bolshevik revolution, Renaissance or European industrial revolution, all had similar circumstances. in the iT era, the technological revolution that the world is experiencing today, we can plainly see how much effort the researchers and experts are putting in behind the scene. As such, we also need to have an open-minded team within our ACC with a missionary zeal, but who are dynamically creative in thinking at platform level.

it is clear that the task bestowed upon the chairman of ACC requires some different traits other than what a successful military commander requires having. The ACC must select a professional team through headhunt basis who will plan a protracted psychological operation to change our corrupt environment to an honest one.

Coercive and muscle-based decision or actions can only terrorize the corrupt people but can never turn them honest. it is difficult to make people believe how effective a planned psychological operation can be in whipping up public opinion and successfully bringing about a change in the social environment. This is the aspect that is sadly lacking in the Commission's efforts so far; the nation cannot expect a second chance in the foreseeable future that has been offered this time by Nature.

if we broadly divide the overall anticorruption effort into three distinctive measures they can be termed as active measure, passive measure and the last, system development. so far, maximum emphasis is on active measure; some bit of system development is also apparent but there is minimum implementation of passive measure - the measure, which is essentially responsi-

ble for environmental change. some passive measures were seen operative but those are notional compared to modern day psychological warfare campaign standards.

To design an effective and long lasting passive counter measure against the corrupt psyche, we need

first of all to find out different psycho gamut of different group of corrupt people, in other words analyze corrupt mentality.

Before prescribing any medicine, a doctor first diagnoses the disease of the patient. He may do this diagnosis following a number of methods like symptomatic, laboratory/clinical or with the help of any electronic equipment. A good doctor never prescribes any medicine until he is sure about the disease. similarly, analysis of corrupt mentality is an undeniable prerequisite before we try to discuss some remedial measures.

Usually an individual who indulges in corruption is a corrupt person, whereas, if we try to analyze the characteristics of a corrupt person, we have to take into consideration the moral value or ethical standing of that individual. That way it is only the moral value, which can be considered as a unit of

measurement to differentiate between various groups of corrupt people.

We may broadly divide such corrupt people in four different groups:

a) A man who does not have any ethics when there is a question of earning money may be considered as 100% corrupt. He exploits people by employing force/tricks or by using legal authority vested upon him as a government representative. A member of law enforcing agency (LEA) for instance may force a transport company or a driver to pay money. in this regard there is no ethical difference between

the corrupt member of LEA and a hijacker. At this point the member of LEA is more detrimental to the nation because the hijacker is an identified culprit whereas the member of LEA is not. Here, LEA does not mean a particular department, rather the government machinery as a whole.

b) A corrupt man may have some ethics of his own, which is mostly to rationalize his own conscience. This type of men probably forms the biggest group of corrupt people. The philosophies with which such type of people indulges in corruption vary from one another. However, a few of them may be mentioned here.

1) For sheer survival someone has to indulge in a bit of corruption in a third world country like Bangladesh.

2) such a corrupt person is often heard saying, “There is no social security in our country like other developed countries. if i die today, my whole family will be on the road tomorrow. so, i must have a house of my own and sufficient (?) bank balance for the future of my family”.

3) To substantiate their wrong deeds it is erroneously argued by a group of corrupt people that the act of corruption is always done by human beings and the word corruption is also coined by human beings. The Bible or the Holy Quran did not say anything specific about the type of corruption we see these days. so somehow the word corruption is (kind of) a misnomer to a lot of corrupt people.

4) some people try to convince their conscience by arguing, “My amount of corruption is so negligible compared to the total volume of corruption in Bangladesh that it does not really matter whether i stop or continue.”

5) “if some one wants to be rich, one has to be corrupt. in this world there is no rich man who is not corrupt. To be rich is not an unethical aim where corruption is a secondary issue”- How strangely fallacious logic!

6) As the act of corruption is rampant in our country and there is hardly any chance of legal action against it, so why lag behind and suffer from frustration?

7) some one convinces his conscience by saying that he does not apply force to take money from the people. Being a government representative and holding a decision-making chair, he only shares the profit between him and the contractors. Any contractor coming to his terms gets the business. He does not force some one to take the business.

c) A very small group of corrupt people is also there who after discharging their responsibilities as govern-

ment representative do not mind receiving gratification in the form of money or gift. They neither force nor adopt any trick for their illegal gifts. This group of people having moderate corruption philosophy is less damaging for the nation than other groups.

d) There is yet another group of corrupt people who cannot tolerate corruption in any way, they even do not receive gifts, but fail to show any initiative, drive or sincerity. such mentality could be an inherent standard of some one or could be an outcome of a corrupt society. Being cautious about their social or financial security, they may quite logically lose all initiative to fight corruption and in the process, working spirit. They can be termed as passive corrupt people. This type of people is equally damaging as the group we have mentioned above because this group of people work as bottleneck in most of the development activities.

Once these gamuts are identified in clear terms, the job of ACC becomes easier. it has to design a psychological or media operation to turn those wrong philosophies right. People have to be convinced that wrong is wrong and that a wrong can never be made right by self-deceiving rationalization. Conviction of corrupt people must be turned towards true honesty. in fact this is the test of efficiency of any ACC. Arresting corrupt people, investigation and framing charge-sheet should form only one part of the total ACC effort.

Coercive or active anti-corruption effort only produces transitory or compulsive honesty but this time we want people to be honest by intention, not by compulsion. Besides the active measure and system development, if ACC can achieve the desired honest environment we would need very less time to bridge the gap between a developed nation and ours.

Now the question is what are these passive measures? How can they be organized, launched or disseminated to ensure optimum affect in mass psyche?

The answer is trouble-free; pick up the right people for the job, create a team of psychological warfare campaign planners and media visionaries. Their mission would be to ensure an honest environment wherein corrupt people of today will feel guilty of their acts and refrain from such deeds even when they are not under strict supervision. Give the team a free hand to plan, present and finally execute a long lasting solution to our deep-rooted corrupt psyche. indeed there is no alternative to this.

The author is a freelancer.