In our society today, who is going up the ladder of prosperity, fame, and respect, and who is suffering the most financially or in respect of prestige and position? If we look at the rich and successful people of the society around us, do we find honesty, good education and efficiency in them? Some of them may have but most of them do not. If you know a person whom you identify as honest, efficient, and educated, do you see him as successful? If it is so, that is an exception.

Most of the people would agree that such people are in a miserable condition financially and also in respect of social status. Obviously, this has a tremendous negative impact on our value system and the same has distorted to a deformed shape where most of universally accepted "good" is being conceived as "bad," and vice versa. When bad is being encouraged and good suppressed, crime and social injustice would thrive and the very foundation of our country would be vulnerable and unstable. Surely if the situation is allowed to continue this would lead us to turmoil and ultimate devastation.

The state is responsible for providing governance in a way to ensure good flourishes and bad perishes. Lack of proper governing or absence of good governance is the cause for distortion of understanding of good and bad in our society. Government is given the job of governing the state, so government cannot escape its responsibility for attaining this harmful and destructive condition.

Interestingly, it is not that our present government brought the country to this stage due to negligence or inefficiency to govern. They created this situation intentionally to fulfill their greed through corruption and to meet their ambition to continue in power perpetually by hook or by crook.

Under this government, people are not judged on the basis of merit, capability, or honesty. People are evaluated on the basis of who would serve short-term or long-term interest of the ruling party best, even if it means working against the interest of the people. When a society gets the impression that whoever can prove their allegiance to the ruling party is being evaluated as per the degree of their loyalty and are receiving return accordingly, what else but blind devotion to ruling party could be considered as good?

It is obvious that people who lack conscience and are corrupt and otherwise incapable or inefficient would do better in this race of faithfulness to vested interests. It is no wonder the best of the corrupt and opportunist are the people going up the steps of prosperity and fame at the cost of good and honest people and ultimately the entire society.

In case of appointment in government offices, even if there is a show of test, the selection is mostly done on the basis of list received from government party people. There are incidents that the candidates coming for test find the result sheet being typed before even the test starts. Public Service Commission, the prestigious organization for filling up higher positions of government bureaucracy, could not retain its credibility due to allegation of partisan favouritism and corruption widely accepted by majority as true.

As reported by a student of a public university, the ex-student leaders of the ruling party who are now MPs or ministers, when paying visits to their student wing in the universities say in their deliberations that the students who belong to their party would not need to take study seriously or do anything else but serve the party to succeed in life. They would get jobs even if they do not qualify in selection test. They could become MPs or ministers like them only if they can ensure by any means that the party remains in power.

Posting, transfers and promotions in government offices are a matter decided on party line in order to serve the ruling party interest best. Not only the usual guidelines are ignored, the existing rules are bent or even changed to suit the above goal. Forced retirement or making of OSD or officer on special duty (meaning keeping the person without any responsibility) is the result of showing less interest or non-fulfillment of irregular dictates of ruling party irrespective of other positive qualities of that person.

Almost all government business including selection of parties for execution of development works like construction of government buildings, roads, bridges, etc., installation of power plants, purchase of defense and other equipments and other government purchases are decided to benefit ruling party leadership or people connected with them.

Most cases, tenders, and other forms of competitive biddings are shown to have been done purely with a view to make documents conform with the rules to avoid any future adverse legal action. In reality, biddings are restricted to only selected parties. Other interested parties are stopped by use of force or intimidation or any other possible means. Even the party who would be selected and the rate at which the bid would be accepted are determined in advance.

It is widely believed that most organizations and individuals connected with extortion or any anti-social or illegal activities are operated either by people connected with ruling party or with the patronage of ruling party activists. It is said they are to be paid protection money for providing patronage. There are allegations that toll for providing protection to illegal activities are also collected by members of law enforcing and other regulating agencies sometimes in connivance with the ruling party people.

In the process, a section of the ruling party people are being benefited directly through irregular and corrupt practices. Corrupt government officials are also being benefited by getting a share by providing all sorts of assistance and cooperating for siphoning out people's money. This is how people following irregular practice are going up in respect of accumulation of wealth through corruption along with power and position. This is also the reason the honest and capable person with conscience and self respect fail to sustain existence with some degree of respect and decency.

When bad works yield apparently good or beneficial results it becomes difficult to stop that practice, as the motivation in real life is very difficult to ignore. It seems the ruling party has taken up this as the theme of their political strategy, especially for the coming general election.

At every constituency the ruling party has made a small number of people from amongst them as owners of at least ten million taka or crorepattis by providing them all sorts of irregular benefits and scope for corruption. Many of them were nothing but paupers and were basically extortionist and village touts.

Of course, this money belongs to the people and was collected by government in different form of taxes and revenues for the benefit of the people and also in the name of development of the country. It is being propagated in different ways that the recipients could attain this benefit as they showed their loyalty towards the ruling party leadership and its interest, even by violating laws of the land if necessary (such as intimidating voters or any other person who tries to resist the desire of the ruling party leadership).

So the call is who wants to become the next crorepati, please come forward and show your loyalty. In a poor country like Bangladesh with limited resources and restricted opportunity this is a very strong motivation.

The ruling party probably feels this may act like addiction of drug for the young generation to lead them to the unholy path of crime and other vices in the name of politics. The ruling party expects this call would definitely be answered by a good number of youths who otherwise do not see a bright future. These youths could take the opportunity to prove their worth in the next general election by becoming the muscleman and creating havoc in favour of the ruling party in intimidating voters and influencing poll results.

Our generation is made to worship criminals. Youth, our future generation, is thus being led to a competition of becoming a bigger criminal instead of competing for real excellence to lead the society to peace and prosperity.

GM Quader is a Member of Parliament.