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Bribe Right in the Developing World

January 4, 2006 at 11:04 AM | by johnrambow | 2 Comments

It's an oldie, but the Tom Zoellner's tips on traveling in the third through fifth worlds are worth a (re)read, especially with many people thinking about their ambitious trips for 2006 right now. A good rule of thumbs is his bribe index: set your initial offer for cops and minor functionaries around 1000th of the per capita income: "Offer more and you're setting yourself up for a real shakedown."

I wish he hadn't said that my employer's guides are "pretty much worthless unless you're a graying foodie,"--but to each his own. (For the record, it's Let's Go that really turns his crank, "Lonely Planet can be tin-eared and inaccurate, [and] Time Out is good only for bars.)

Related Stories:
·   Really Lonely Planet: 16 Travel Tips for the Developing World [Black Table]
·   Resolved for 2006: Finding New Ways to Travel [NYT]
·   Edges of the world [USA Today]

2 Comments

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  1. dogbert

    Jaunted Member

    The menace of corruption!

    Well... No matter who you are, where you live and what you do you'll surely have had experiences with corrupt peoples.  In developing countries, the shift from command economics to free market economics has created massive opportunities for the appropriation of rents (that is, excessive profits) and has often been accompanied by a change from a well-organized system of corruption to a more chaotic and deleterious one.

    Corruption also seeped in the our police and the judiciary system. Traffic laws in our country seem to be the worst in the world.  A small bribe on the spot to a traffic policeman can save a traffic ticket or a court trip.

    Corruption exists because of the unfulfillment of the basic needs of the general population. To eradicate corruption, Pakistan has to implement right macro-economic (micro and macro -economic)policies rather than questioning the ethical standards of its population.

    Then the following needs to be augmented in the developing countries:-

    • training and paying decent salaries to civil servants/ police / medical staff and teachers on time every month so that they are in a position to lead by example.

    • privatising state assets - monopolies are a breeding ground for corruption. A government’s job is to govern and create the infrastructure to look after the well-being of its people.

    • an independent judiciary needs to be established and the rule of law needs to be firmly rooted.

    • the central bank should be wholly independent and its staff should be beyond reproach. People with ability and whose integrity can be trusted should fill the top roles. There should only be one foreign exchange rate for the currency.

    • open and transparent tendering of government contracts and when work is complete, a survey of the quality of the work done before final payment.

    • a free press and media.

    • periodic meetings in which government ministers can be questioned and held to account by civil society.
    January 6, 2006 at 5:24 AM

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