Fighting corruption
by
AJ Philip |
Toothless Lok Pal is a great disappointment
If any particular theme dominated public discourse in 2011, it was corruption. And as the nation gets ready to welcome the New Year, the scourge continues to haunt the conscience of the people. The person responsible for making it a national issue is Anna Hazare, a former army driver-turned social worker-turned anti-corruption crusader who proved that village-development calls for mere harnessing of available resources.
Hindu mythology rests on the belief that God acts through chosen people or by taking birth on earth to counter evil. Many believe that Mahatma Gandhi was one such chosen person to deliver the country from foreign rule, just as Jayaprakash Narayan proved the man destined to counter Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s authoritarianism in the seventies.
Hazare, who transformed Ralegaon-Siddhi into a model village, is thus seen by many as the one who is set to remove the stigma of corruption from India. While this may be too daunting a task, he has certainly succeeded in capturing the imagination of the people. The Lok Pal is an Ombudsman-like institution governments in power have been promising the nation to fight corruption.
Apart from promises, none of the parties, be it the Congress or the Bharatiya Janata Party or the Janata Dal, showed any interest in setting up the Lok Pal. The people got so fed up with their promises that Hazare had little difficulty in rallying a large group of people behind him when he demanded a strong Lok Pal. And when he sat on a hunger strike in the summer, the government realised that its foundations were indeed weak.
Last year’s Commonwealth Games witnessed a slew of corruption charges against the organisers, particularly politician Suresh Kalmadi, leading to his arrest. Similarly, the charge that there was huge corruption in the allotment of 2G Spectrum on first-come-first-served basis led to the arrest of former Telecom Minister A. Raja and then Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi’s daughter and his party’s MP Kanimozhi.
The judiciary also adopted a no-nonsense approach on corruption that led to the imprisonment of former Kerala Electricity Minister R. Balakrishna Pillai and former Union Telecom Minister Sukh Ram. For once, people believed that the corrupt can not only be exposed but also sent to the jail.
All this forced the government to give a solemn promise that a strong Lok Pal would be set up by the end of this year. It was in fulfilment of this promise that it presented a Bill in Parliament for the purpose a day before Christmas. Alas, this has not satisfied the Anna Team, a group of former civil servants like Kiran Bedi and Aravind Kejriwal, who have been busy picking holes in the government’s Bill.
The Bill envisages a nine-member Lok Pal which will have power to inquire into charges against any official, including the prime minister, subject to some conditions. It will not have an investigative agency like the Central Bureau of Investigation under it. It also envisages representation to the minorities. Its critics argue that since the Constitution does not recognise religion-based reservation, the provision will be declared ultra vires of the Constitution. In other words, it will become a subject of legal dispute.
Hazare has dubbed it a Bill to “protect the corrupt”. Those who question the need for an investigative agency under it ask, when the Supreme Court does not have one directly under it, why should the Lok Pal have one. There are hair-splitting arguments on both sides but the fact is that the Bill does not have the necessary support in Parliament.
While the debate is on, Transparency International has in a recent study found that the level of corruption has increased in India by a few points this year, partly because there is greater unwillingness to tolerate corruption. On its latest corruption perception index, India scored 3.1 on a scale from zero to 10. Last year, India scored 3.3.
The study brought together data from a variety of sources, including business surveys and country experts, to assess the overall extent of graft in 183 nations. India ranked 95th in the list, while China, which scored 3.6 points, ranked 75th. Of the BRIC economies, India did better than only Russia, which ranked way down at No. 143 with a score of 2.4.
In South Asia, India did worse than both Sri Lanka (No. 86) and the tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan (No. 38). In other words, fighting corruption is a Herculean task, even for a strong Lok Pal. And when it is a toothless Lok Pal, the less said the better it will be.
Oman Tribune |
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