Wednesday, February 23, 2022

Incompetence is the Mother of Corruption


Typically, the conventional wisdom is that "corruption is the mother of incompetence". The argument goes like the following: If there was no corruption, no incompetent judges would be hired, no incompetent civil servants would be hired or promoted, there would be no incompetent NAB, there would be no incompetent MNAs and MPAs and  there would be no incompetent Ministers. 

Thanks to the dictatorships, they had used the corruption to prolong their rule and survive. Zia ul Haq introduced non-party-based elections to bring the business mafia into the politics and unethical business mafia generated all the mess to engineer incompetence in all areas so their illegal wealth can grow and they never get caught by any system: Judiciary, law enforcement etc. The business mafia ensured incompetent people get hired at all levels to support their illegal actions. Thanks to Zia ul Haque and dictatorship.

Irfan Hyder: It is all relative, if we believe the corruption has stopped it is lie. If we say corruption will be eliminated in 5 years it will be a lie. However it will be relative: less or more 
However this will be interesting to see how IK will be able to stop his colleagues (fellow ministers) from the corruption who had been part and parcel of previous governments and had made millions/ Billions in corruption. How he will be able to stop the Civil Servent and Army senior management who is sitting at key posts in Pakistan and by default and by inheritance and by DNA are corrupt . 

If not he will be held responsible for not stopping. Unfortunately he is unable to control. 

Why ?

He may have excuses of minority government and of course, strong presence of Army. 

If I were him I would employ the professionals in all ministries, hired by the international HR companies to develop and run the policies by them. Remove Civil Servent from policy formation and keep them as Administrative of the ministries. Keep ministers only to have status symbols.  

My opinion could be wrong

Mohammed Yaseen: 

my dear, I am a practitioner change leader. Corruption is a symptom that indicates presence of manual processes, lack of ownership of the process from end to end, informal and unwritten exceptions, informal and unwritten workarounds that only experienced babus know and invoke when they cite precedence, convoluted mish-mash of jurisdictions, multiple reporting lines,.... Unless the processes are all automated, all exceptions formally entered in the system and visible and transparent to all, the competent authority is named and is made owner and responsible for the decision, all workarounds are formally made part of the automated process, things will not improve. And this requires competence...

Irfan Hyder: Interesting
My arguments were how we got into the mess. Now the context is reversal: How to stop corruption. I 200% agree with you. The best strategy is now to hire competent people at key positions. 

The present system can not and will not be able to stop or reduce corruption. 


Mohammed Yaseen: So your solution for fighting corruption is to hire competent people and which is my contention too. One can only control corruption with competence.
Your comment about corruption being relative and will decrease over time is again supporting my contention as follows. Rs 30 billion metro constructed in one year has lesser corruption than Rs 100 billion metro constructed in 3years. Competence brings efficiency which reduces corruption

Mohammed Yaseen:
People say the proof of the pudding is in the eating to mean that something can only be judged to be good or bad after it has been tried or used. ...
See what happened in imaandar and incompetent ik's tenure. 

Irfan Hyder It is all relative, if we believe the corruption has stopped it is lie. If we say corruption will be eliminated in 5 years it will be a lie. However it will be relative: less or more
However this will be interesting to see how IK will be able to stop his colleagues (fellow ministers) from the corruption who had been part and parcel of previous governments and had made millions/ Billions in corruption. How he will be able to stop the Civil Servent and Army senior management who is sitting at key posts in Pakistan and by default and by inheritance and by DNA are corrupt .

If not he will be held responsible for not stopping. Unfortunately he is unable to control.

Why ?

He may have excuses of minority government, Strong presence of Army.

If I were him I would employ the professionals in all ministries, hired by the international HR companies to develop and run the policies by them. Remove Civil Servent from policy formation and keep them as Administrative of the ministries. Keep ministers only to have status symbols. 

My opinion could be wrong I am sorry and we discussed earlier, it is other way around, corruption is mother of incompetence

If there was no corruption we never had incompetent judges hired, we never had incompetent civil servants hired, we never had incompetent NAB, we never had incompetent MNAs and MPAs and we never had incompetent Ministers

Thanks to dictatorship who had helped the corruption for their survival. Zial haque introduced non party based elections to bring the business mafia into the politics and unethical business mafia generated all the mess to engineer incompetence in all areas so their illegal wealth can grow and they never get caught by any system: Judiciary, law enforcement etc. The business mafia ensured incompetent people get hired at all levels to support their illegal actions. Thanks to Zial haque and dictatorship People say the proof of the pudding is in the eating to mean that something can only be judged to be good or bad after it has been tried or used. ... The idea is that the best way to test the quality of a pudding is to taste it rather than admire its appearance.Technically speaking my contention is NOT that Incompetence is worse than corruption. Rather, it is: Incompetence is mother of corruption. I.e Incompetence breeds and nurtures corruption. There is a subtle but a very important distinction.

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