Devendra Raj Panday who died 15 July in Kathmandu lived a remarkable life that was a shining multidimensional mosaic. The constant guiding beacon he followed and espoused for others was ‘integrity’.
He himself was exemplary in the practice of integrity in both his personal and professional life, and this was widely known and appreciated in Nepal and abroad. It was his defining trademark, making him a genuine rarity.
Later in his career, he became engrossed with a different perspective: the ‘idea of integrity’ as a foundational normative principle necessary to create a just and equitable society and nation.
His initial exposition of this idea was related to his steadfast role as an anticorruption campaigner in Transparency International. He was not just appalled at the level of public corruption in Nepal, but sought to better understand and analyse the causes and consequences of corruption more generally.
As he read the wider scholarly literature on corruption and economic development, he was dissatisfied with conventional frameworks used to identify causes and prescriptions to control it.
His key insight on why anticorruption campaigns in Nepal and elsewhere have been ineffectual, regardless of the menu they followed, is that they missed the critical element of integrity in their underlying values systems.
He espoused a broader meaning of integrity as a fostering value focused not just on self-interest, but also on genuine concern for ‘the other’.
‘Integrity deficit disorder’ in political or socio-economic systems leads to many other ills – injustice, inequalities, discrimination, and even violence in such communities.
He developed this in the scholarly 2018 book, The Idea of Integrity and the Universe of Corruption and Anticorruption. On periodic family visits to the United States over several years, he went to university libraries and diligently took copious notes that resulted in this enthralling book.
The Introduction chapter begins with: ‘The best way to be acquainted with a subject is to write a book about it (Benjamin Disraeli)’. I came upon his book late during a call on him in mid-2025, when I received a now cherished autographed copy. I had only read it cursorily and was looking forward to discussing his views and his scholarship in my next stay in Kathmandu this year. But alas that was not to be.
I first met Devendra Raj Panday on starting work in 1981 at the then Integrated Development System (IDS, now the Institute for Integrated Development Studies, IIDS). He was Executive Director and new to IDS, which itself was new. As with new and small things, we had a lot of close interactions that helped define my career and world view. It was my very good fortune.
Reviewing and even critiquing some aspects of his ‘idea of integrity’ is now my way of paying tribute to my mentor, an institution builder and distinguished scholar.
His grand thesis was the need to develop integrity at the system level as a prerequisite for a just and fair society, without corruption.
This is an extensively researched book, covering many different academic disciples and perspectives on the sources, types, and consequences of corruption. He delved into copious citations from and analyses of the grand themes in the philosophical, political, and religion and ethics literature on corruption.
He also reviewed narrower perspectives on the economics of corruption, focusing on the design of incentives and punishment that can make the expected returns to corrupt behaviour lower than the returns to honest behaviour.
He is critical, however, of this narrow economic approach which sometimes lead to the absurd conclusion that some level of corruption may not only be inevitable, but even desirable.
He also analyses concrete examples of different types of corruption, especially political corruption from many countries, including the US. There is even a short Appendix titled ‘US and Nepal: same same?’ to illustrate his key point that despite great differences across countries with unique histories and different levels of democratic processes and economic development, there is also a common source for corruption due to a value system deficient in the idea of integrity.
In other words, while political structure and socio-economic contexts differ across countries, and over time within a country, corruption is always on the menu. In the case of Nepal, it is indeed a big disappointment for him that corruption has persisted so strongly, despite several major political paradigm shifts and advances in the democracy journey that he himself helped usher in.
His other disappointment was that despite the rapid expansion in anticorruption advocacy globally, such as by Transparency International and now including major donor agencies like the World Bank, there has been little improvement to show for it all.
Again, he notes the missing link is the absence of an integrity framework that defeats the anticorruption agenda.
He also worried about the dangers of anticorruption activities and corruption going hand in hand. Anticorruption agencies and actors themselves become protectors or shield for their corrupt political masters, and also engage in vindictive campaigns against political opponents or preceding government officials.
