A flawed mirror |
THE National Corruption Perception Survey (NCPS) by Transparency International Pakistan 2025 has once again confirmed what many Pakistanis suspect: people believe corruption is widespread, deep-rooted and structurally embedded across the state. Police, tenders and procurement, and the judiciary top the list of perceived offenders. However, a staggering 66 per cent of respondents say they did not personally face a situation requiring them to pay a bribe in the last year. A majority believe their purchasing power has declined, that provincial governments are more corrupt than local ones, and that anti-corruption institutions need oversight themselves. In the health sector, respondents describe corruption as having a “very high impact” on people’s lives. Across nearly every question, citizens express mistrust of public services, of state capacity, of political neutrality, of institutional fairness.
Year after year, Transparency International’s findings shape headlines and political rhetoric. Politicians pick up select statistics to batter their rivals. Television screens host endless discussions on whether corruption has increased or decreased. Academics cite the results as useful indicators of public sentiment. Commentators and columnists use NCPS numbers to summarise, and sometimes oversimplify, public mood. The report has become a reference point in national discourse, often treated with the same authority as an official statistical document.
But it is time we interrogated this unquestioned acceptance. The NCPS is an ambitious exercise, but ambition alone does not make it methodologically sound. One can argue that the underlying methodology is flawed........