They say one should not speak ill of the dead. But memory has its own ethics, and sometimes the truth sits quietly inside nostalgia. My late uncle used to take us on long drives across Punjab—Gujrat, Sialkot, parts of Faisalabad, and Lahore.

We were children, so the journeys felt like adventures. At every stop, factory managers welcomed him warmly. We left with boxes of shoes, crockery sets, and sometimes bundles of clothing. To us, it felt like generosity. We thought he was important, respected, and loved.

Years later, studying environmental governance, the memory rearranged itself into something darker. Those gifts were not kindness. They were payments. My uncle, a senior government officer, was helping factories avoid compliance.

The gifts were cheaper than installing filters, managing waste, or reducing emissions. I still struggle with this memory because he was not a cartoon villain. He was affectionate, funny, and devoted to family. Which raises a question that sits at the heart of Pakistan’s corruption debate: is corruption about bad individuals, or about systems that quietly recruit ordinary people into unethical behaviour?

The recently launched Index of Transparency and Accountability in Pakistan (iTAP), developed by Ipsos with Pakistani institutional partners, is interesting precisely because it complicates the usual narrative. The most striking pattern is the perception–lived experience gap.

A large majority of Pakistanis believe corruption is widespread in public institutions. Yet significantly fewer report direct personal experience with bribery, nepotism, or illicit enrichment. That gap matters psychologically. When people........

© The Friday Times