That apart, TI doesn’t have a specific focus like environment related issues like Greenpeace does. TI works with government, media, society and businesses to implement anti-corruption reforms.

Dr. Anke Martiny, a member of the board of TI Germany says that corruption should be fought as a win-win game rather than putting one of the parties concerned on the defensive.

The question uppermost on our minds is whether such an amicable approach is really effective in educating defaulters and cleaning up the system. Like for example in Indonesia, a country known for its bad reputation in corruption, such co-operative approach would not be suitable as the government itself along with the society has placed corruptors and their corrupt practices to be the enemy of the state.

On the other hand, one could argue that countries such as India and China, despite being high up on TI’s corruption perception index, are doing very well on the economic front. In such cases, where is the incentive for a clean society and how does one justify that corruption really impacts economic growth.

At the same time, some have even questioned the authencity of the annual reports brought out by TI on corruption and bribery. For example, the annual corruption perception index brought out by TI drew flak from academic quarters, with the Columbia University professor and economist Jagdish Bhagwati stating: “Asking a bunch of people whether they think India is corrupt, and trying to compare such answers across countries, is ridiculously subjective and arbitrary. You should not circulate these absurd rankings, I believe. There are surely things to improve in South Asia; but we are not so bad as these rankings make out.”

Though Dr. Martiny did not have concrete answers to these doubts raised, she believed that in the long run, bribing and using power would be detrimental for businesses. “Take the Siemens example. It proves that its very expensive and not good to follow corruption in the long run.” She added that one could just estimate the extent of corruption in countries by working with research and academic institutes.

By Ika Krismantari and Chandra Ranganathan

These past three days, we have been searching for an answer of a big question directed to all journalists around the world, the one that is pointed by Dr. Marlis Prinzing since the beginning of her lecture. Is it possible to have a common ethic understanding? Mmm…

That’s surely not an easy question to answer, even for these 23 journalists participating for this year’s Summer Academy because we come from different countries, with different mindsets, perspective and historical background, which would be very difficult to find the commonality.

Actually, the question has haunted the journalism society for a quite sometime. The debate recently erupted again after the controversy over the publication of the cartoon of Prophet Muhammad by a Danish newspaper.

Not only that the cartoon creates more problems in the relationship between the Muslim world and Western world, it also affected the media world, which was suddenly divided into two parts, the pro-cartoon, which are mostly Western media, which use the freedom of the press as the reason why they decide to publish the cartoon and anti-cartoon side in the other part of the battle, which comes from the Muslim media, accusing their Western media partner of misusing the freedom of expressing rights of the press.

So, can we speak the same language then?

I’m sure we can, I believe it is not an impossible task to reach the same understanding.

Let’s not put this freedom to express above everything. How about if we just go back to the basic principle of human lives, about humanism, about giving respect to other people’s religions, to place ourselves in somebody else’s shoes, to develop sensitivity of a matter, before deciding anything.

Yeah, I’m sure we can develop those values and share them together.

I’m optimistic about that.

At least, that is what I believe in during the course, as I found that that during the past five days, we actually can share same value with other participants, despite our differences even they are only small stuffs.

We, at least from the girl participants’ perspective, are speaking the same language when it comes to go shopping, or when finding the best hang-in-out place in this town, or picking good looking guys (we surely have not too much differences on the fact that Niko, the bartender in Sternschanze is one of them, right girls J?), or even when we try to decipher the complicated art works of Mark Rothko, we even try to reach the same understanding how to appreciate the masterpiece when we visit his painting exhibition in Hamburg.

Yeah, let’s start from those small things.

Maybe from that part of understanding, we can move to something big in the end.

Let’s hope so!!!