When I’m not working for these guys, I dabble in writing novels. If you dig hard enough, you might find a few dusty copies in secondhand bookstores or in those ‘10 Books for Two Bucks’ discount bins in K-Mart. But would I say my profession was ‘writer’? Well, in this day and age of multi-tasking and jack-of-all-trading, it’s not something I think about. Until, that is, you’re facing a customs official. Once when I was tackling one of those Entry Visa/Arrivals Card thingies you receive as you land in a foreign country, after a moment of head-scratching, I put ‘Writer’ as my occupation. Unfortunately the country was Zimbabwe and the authorities interpreted ‘Writer’ as ‘Journalist’, and Bob Mugabe isn’t a fan of foreign journos… or local ones for that matter. While everybody else was being welcomed in, I was in the naughty queue having my passport scrutinised and stamped very differently indeed. Things looked scary and I seriously considered slipping a banknote into the negotiations to see if the nightmare would magically go away. Trouble is, you never know when you might strike the one-in-million ‘honest cop’. Finally, they got bored of my terrified squeaking and let me go. Three days later a friend arrived and under ‘Previous Convictions’ he admitted to a 15-year-old speeding fine (he’s a solicitor – couldn’t help himself). He emerged from the Suspect Queue after two long hours and only after wafting US$200 under the right nose.

BRIBERY: TIP OF THE ICEBERG

Corruption and bribery is an integral part of the system in many developing countries. The practice of putting a sweetener in someone’s lunchbox to get a job done sooner, better and faster is as normal as flipping a few bucks to the bellhop outside a New York hotel. It’s a fact of life, not a crime wave.

A large number of international companies and organisations have become mired in a thick mud of Indian over-bureaucracy, incompetence and apathy during their attempts to retrieve equipment from the continent and money from the Indian government following the Commonwealth Games. But you could ask – didn’t they see this coming? It’s only been around oh… a couple of hundred years. What did they expect? Things to be done properly – like here? Hmm…

Oddly, the problem now, it seems, is a lack of corruption. Corruption is the grease that makes the cogs of Indian commerce go round and as a system it worked perfectly well – albeit in an Indian kind of way where nothing was ever really done, but hey, it got the Taj Mahal built without too many stop-work meetings. Then the Commonwealth Games gave a lot of countries the opportunity to stick their westernised, civilised foot in the door and start bleating about the level of corruption in India and demanding something be done – which they did.

And now the whole country’s ground to a halt.

So what do I mean about a lack of bribery being the problem?  Well, a lot of petty officials and minor bureaucrats have stopped processing an impossible tangle of paperwork – and they’re the only ones who can process it – because they’re scared that getting anything achieved is tantamount to admitting to being corrupt and they’ll get fired. In other words, just getting things done is proof you’re a bit dodgy.

In Australia we’re expert at being a bit dodgy and I’ve come up with a solution. (Be warned, it’s going to take an upsetting amount of beer.)