LIKE migrating birds, a large number of desi friends head westwards in the summer, fleeing Pakistan’s heat for cooler climes. Sadly, they tend to cluster in London when they are in the UK, and few accept my standing invitation to visit me in Devizes.

Although we are just an hour from Paddington station by train, my friends from Pakistan think we are in the boondocks, and generally decline the chance to see something of England’s lovely countryside. And Devizes itself is a charming old market town that is worth a visit for itself.

One reason I persist in trying to tempt my friends to visit me is entirely selfish: I must confess that speaking English for extended periods is a subconscious strain. As somebody said about speaking a foreign language for weeks without a break: “Zaban tehri ho jatee hai”, or “My tongue gets twisted.”

So I was delighted when Jawed Naqvi, my friend and colleague, announced that he would stay with us for a few days on his way from the United States back to Delhi. As Dawn readers know, Jawed is an erudite, highly civilised journalist who explores numerous literary, political and social themes in his instructive and entertaining columns.

Above all, Jawed is an iconoclast who loves flaying Indian sacred cows, much to the discomfort of his countrymen. Due to his Muslim name, many of them think he’s a Pakistani and are furious that one of the enemies should dare to be so scathing about India while writing from its capital. Over the years, I have received scores of emails from Indian readers complaining bitterly about Dawn’s Delhi correspondent.

I always reply that they should write directly to Jawed; and in any case, he has every right to criticise his country as I do mine. Apparently, Jawed seldom bothers to answer his angry critics, and this irritates them even more.

He enjoyed Devizes, and its surrounding drives and walks. But I would like to think the abiding memory of his visit was that of a dish of stewed rabbit I cooked for him. We talked about many things, but I was particularly interested in his take on the Anna Hazare anti-corruption crusade.

According to Jawed, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was dragging his feet on meeting the widespread demand to introduce anti-corruption legislation because he was corrupt himself, and was presiding over a venal government. He went on to allege that Mr Singh had not exactly been entirely clean during his earlier stint as finance minister.

It is true that over the last few months, shocking cases of corruption involving those in power have come to light in India. A weak government at the centre is bound to be blackmailed by its coalition partners, as we know from our experience in Pakistan. And India’s economy is much larger than ours, so the size of the cake to be shared out is proportionately bigger.

While in Pakistan, the nexus is largely between feudal landlords and politicians, in India, it is between large business houses and lawmakers. According to media reports, many MPs are on the payroll of India’s huge industrial and commercial conglomerates. Fully a third of those elected in the last general elections have criminal charges filed against them.

But corruption in the subcontinent has a long and dishonourable history. Everybody knows about the Moghul official who was so corrupt that he was given a job counting waves in the belief that here was a sinecure that would not allow him to take bribes. But he began summoning masters of vessels, and demanding money because their ships disturbed the pattern of the waves he had been directed to count.

The British East India Company continued this tradition, with clerks and ‘white Moghuls’ making fortunes in India, and setting up in fine style back home after finishing their stint. Warren Hastings, Governor-General of Bengal, is reputed to have amassed a huge personal fortune in India.

Although it is political corruption that makes headlines and is the subject of drawing room gossip, far more damage is done by the institutionalised corruption that is so much a part of the social and economic fabric of South Asia. Clerks and inspectors rake it in on a steady, regular but unspectacular basis.

A friend in Karachi who owns and runs a factory once counted 14 federal and provincial departments that sent inspectors to his business periodically. When I asked him how the Civil Defence agency could possibly extort money from him, he replied that if he didn’t pay, they would nominate key members of his staff for a two-week long civil defence course. Talk about counting waves…

Another businessman friend has been forced to shut down his production facility because he refused to pay bribes. The cost of doing business legally and honestly is apparently so high that you can’t compete with those cutting corners and evading taxes.

All too often, the very businessmen who complain about corruption over a drink in the evening are the ones who pay bribes to escape taxes, duties and other dues. I am told that some TV anchors who regularly denounce politicians for corruption are among the growing tribe of tax-avoiders.

The victims of this political and bureaucratic graft – and I include the military here – are a long-suffering public. Every small task involving a government functionary requires illegal gratification. No wonder Anna Hazare’s movement is gaining so much support. Perhaps somebody in Pakistan will emulate his crusade, even though I can’t think of anybody here with his moral authority with the possible exception of Edhi.

But we should keep things in perspective: we in South Asia don’t have a monopoly on corruption. As the phone-hacking scandal revealed, officers from London’s famed Scotland Yard took petty bribes to give journalists access to information.

China, once a byword for probity, is now terrifyingly corrupt.

Human nature being what it is, I’m not holding my breath for a complete change in attitudes. But I do wish Anna Hazare and his many followers good luck in cleansing the system of its debilitating venality.