Learning and Life: Incompetence and inefficiency is the Mother of Corruption and is the fundamental problem of third world countries

Had corruption been the cause of our problems, then IK's "clean" govt's anti-corruption drive should have been showing better results. IK's "clean" govt has falsified the hypothesis that Pakistan's plight is because of corruption! It is the inefficiency and incompetence, stupids! Incompetence, not corruption, is responsible for our woes and problem.

[To understand the context of this post, please read At What Cost! Why Compute Economic Costs of Faulty Political Decisions]

Corruption is a "symptom" and not the "cause". Inefficiency and incompetence is the "cause". Corruption is only the manifestation/symptom of incompetence. Greater the incompetence, greater the corruption. IK government's incompetence and inefficiency has plunged the country into deeper problems. Corruption has increased to ten times because the incompetent government has come to a standstill after a screeching halt! Consequently, nothing moves except through gigantic corruption.

We have been following the anti corruption ٹرک کی بتی for the last 70 years. We have tried strong dictators for 35 years whose rule viciously and brutally tried to curb corruption, we had CJPs (from CJP Munir to CJP Khosa) using Doctrine of Necessity DoN sword to usurp constitutional rights of the people, stupidly running after the chimera of "necessity" to "make unlawful lawful" for eradicating corruption since 1950s. We have tried killing, deposing, imprisoning, firing of 16 of "bloody civilian" prime ministers (without letting them complete their tenures) in the name of anti corruption drives. We have tried 58-2b, we have tried 61-f, we have tried dictators, we have tried liberal dictators, we have tried islamic dictators, and We have tried stealth martial law from space to eradicate corruption. The more the anti corruption drive, the greater the pain of economic slide:
بڑھتا گیا درد جوں جوں دوا کی
It is time to debunk the hypothesis that corruption is the fundamental malady afflicting Pakistan. It is not corruption, but Incompetence and inefficiency, stupids!

It is insane to be doing the same thing again n again and expecting a different result!

We should try massive BPR and changing of government processes to increase efficiency and speed of delivery. BPR will curb incompetence and will reward merit and decrease incompetence. But, this will require that the government should focus on Covey's First Habit of concentrating on circle of Influence (processes) rather than the circle of Concern (corruption). We have example of massive reduction in corruption in Passport and Nadra through increase in efficiency. We have several such examples in Pakistan.

One of my FB friend explained this as follows:
"While delivering a Lean Six Sigma training in a sensitive organisation, I found out that their procurement life cycle was 1.5 years. That is a next level of systematic incompetence. The interesting thing was that I was told that Rs 60 part is still bought for Rs 600. To me it's clear that Rs 540 is much less of a spillage than waiting for 1.5 years." Unfortunately the costs of incompetence and inefficiency are far greater. Compare the costs of "corruption filled" Rs30Bn Multan metro completed in one year with the still unfinished "clean corruption free" Rs 100Bn Peshawar Metro causing traffic jams in largest city of kpk for the last three years wasting millions of man-hours of city travellers !