Ashim Choudhury is evidently a gifted writer. He has in such succinct and perfect words put across the problem of corruption in India and its solution: Anna’s movement. Every Indian MUST read this. ================================= Anna Hazare’s battle against corruption isn’t just his battle. It’s every Indian’s battle. If Anna fails, we fail. Politicians across party lines stand to lose most if the movement succeeds in getting a strong Lokpal Bill legislated in parliament. Anna is a catalyst in the fight to mitigate corruption in public life. He has no personal motive, no personal gain, no financial interest. Instead of criticising his methods, help him improve them. No one is perfect – certainly not Anna and his team members. But most of them are a lot better than the 162 MPs in the Lok Sabha and 39 MPs in the Rajya Sabha (www.adrindia.org) who have criminal charges against them. Some of these charges are politically motivated. But many are not. For example, 75 Lok Sabha MPs, again cutting across party lines, face court-framed charges of murder, rape, extortion, kidnapping and dacoity. No wonder many parliamentarians are dead set against Anna and his anti-corruption crusade. They will do anything to discredit his movement. And in this task they have found witting and unwitting abettors in sections of the media and the intelligentsia. All have one trait: they mock Anna but have no alternative to offer in India’s battle against corruption. Some are so witless they don’t even realise how wrong they’ve got it. Anna is not the problem. The system is. Anna’s prescription may not be perfect. But it’s every citizen’s job to help improve it. The government, as a beneficiary of institutionalised corruption, isn’t going to go out of its way to do so. Take just one example to illustrate the serious nature of the court-framed charges many Lok Sabha MPs face. Kameshwar Baitha of the JMM has 11 charges related to murder and 17 charges related to attempt to murder filed against him. As many at 28 ministers in Akhilesh Yadav’s UP cabinet have criminal cases pending against them. The most notorious is Raja Bhaiya who has 45 criminal cases against him. He spent three years in jail on POTA charges and is today UP’s Food and Civil Supplies Minister. It is such politicians who threaten our democracy and our institutions – not Team Anna members with their inflated travel vouchers and income-tax arrears due to a technical interpretation of paid study leave for a then-IRS officer. It has been obvious since Indira Gandhi’s government first introduced – but did not legislate – the Lokpal Bill in 1968 thatpoliticians fear a strong, independent Lokpal. Their argument, parroted by their media handmaidens, is that the Lokpal will be a monstrous bureaucracy accountable to no one. This of course is nonsense. The Lokpal would be accountable in five ways as I wrote in The Times of India this February (New grid of governance). First, through an internal complaints redressal authority; second, via an annual performance and financial audit by CAG; third, through a Lokpal appellate bench; fourth, from overall jurisdiction of the Lokpal bench by the High Courts and the Supreme Court; and fifth, through a special parliamentary committee. The Lokpal is obviously not a panacea as some Congress spokesmen say sotto voce to deliberately obfuscate the issue. It would be just one of five powerful instruments in the integrated, interlocked grid of governance that would include the EC, CAG, the new proposed National Judicial Commission (NJC) and an independent CBI as analysed in detail in The Times piece cited above. An independent CBI is central to this interlocked governance grid. With the Lokpal excercising jurisdictional oversight, the CBI would thus be accountable to an independent statutory authority which itself would be subject not only to the five internal checks and balances outlined above but to the discipline of being part of an integrated, interlocked governance grid. Some critics warn that 40,000 extra staff will be needed to man the Lokpal body. This is a deliberate falsehood. In the interlocked grid model, no more than 1,000 new staff will be needed to investigate and allow prosecution of complaints against 60 lakh central government employees (including 78 Union Ministers and Ministers of State). The reason? An independent CBI will, under the Lokpal body’s supervision, investigate cases forwarded by the Lokpal bench. Special fast-track courts will prosecute them. State Lokayuktas, with similar mechanisms, will supervise the investigation and prosecution of state-level public servants through local CIDs and courts. These institutions already have adequate personnel which the Lokpal will deploy. Remember too that police autonomy has been mandated by the Supreme Court in September 2006 under a seven-directive order. When it is implemented by the government – a contempt of court petition against non-compliance is pending in the Supreme Court – not only will the CBI be freed of political control, so will state CIDs. The Mumbai and Delhi police forces alone have over 40,000 personnel each so a central Lokpal body with 1,000 staff and a7-member bench (not one individual “Lokpal” as some motivated reports misleadingly claim) hardly constitutes a bureaucratic monstrosity. The so-called elite – intellectual, media, business – disparage Anna because he is not “people like us”. This wannabe-elite is comfortable with the status quo with its cosy nepotism, clubbiness and rich pickings. A red herring is meanwhile used by the government: “Team Anna members are themselves corrupt – people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones”. That unthinking logic would disqualify 90% of the police force from arresting criminals because the police themselves take bribes. Only the corrupt use this spurious argument to deflect the accusations they have no real answers for. Those who castigate Team Anna for denigrating our institutions are falling into the trap set by politicians:discredit the largely honest whistleblower and therefore by default exonerate the largely dishonest politician. MPs are lawmakers. They are elected to uphold standards of public life not lower them. As public servants, they exist to serve citizens. “In a democracy,” as US Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter declared, “the highest office is the office of the citizen.” Indian public servants – including the Prime Minister and his cabinet – are subordinate to every Indian citizen. The poorest, most destitute Indian is more important than the President of India. That is the way real democracy operates. It is a principle leaders in democracies with long histories like US President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron uphold every working day. In contrast, some of the comments made by government ministers against Anna’s anti-corruption movement border on the infantile. The MoS in the PMO, V. Narayanasamy, said of Anna’s fast: “It is an attempt fool the people.” He added: “It is good they told very openly today they are forming a political party. Their intentions are exposed.” Fasting as a protest against corruption and forming a political party are both entirely legitimate. That a government minister can categorise either in the way he did says more about Narayanasamy than Anna. And yet there are those in the chattering classes who support this unhinged government reaction rather than encouraging a movement against corruption which, if put on the right track, could improve all our lives. Then there are those, in the government and the media, who insouciantly challenge Anna’s team members to stand for election. But if fighting an election were a criterion for fighting corruption, every activist and – yes – every journalist who exposed corruption would need to first get elected. Such is the thoughtlessness – deliberate and inadvertent – that has lowered the standard of argument over the anti-corruption movement. Whose side are we on? An imperfect Anna fighting our battle? Or a corruption-riddled political system? If Anna is not doing the job of fighting corruption well enough, help him do it better. Don’t help the corrupt by denigrating a movement’s methods when the end is just. Since April 2011, the UPA government has dealt with Anna's movement with deception and bad faith. Corruption is the leitmotif of the political ecosystem. That is why politicians have tried continuously to splinter this citizen’s movement. United, citizens would win. Divided, a corrupt government will win. Forward this Email... -- India Against Corruption, Pune www.iacpune.in
Thanks for sharing a good article, Our conribution can be in the form of reading this first, I hope mant sisters land in here to atleast understand that people occupying Higher positions how corrupt and facing judicial charges against them are dictating Indian citizens. Dont we have people fair enough to occupy chairs...
Thank you for sharing your thoughts on this perennial epidemic that is consuming our country in every walk of life.
Dear Rp... You have brought out much needed information... hope people see what is reality unless we people become proactive, corruption will not get eliminated... By proactive I mean to elect a person who has good track record of keeping his election promise but the main problem is we rarely find such person... I hope genuine people will join Anna's party...
Thank you VJb for your very thoughtful response. With members from Team Anna deciding to float a political party, due to this unresponsive, corrupt-to-the-core government, we have a glimmer of hope. It is now up to us as people for choose the alternative. As you rightly said, we can only hope that genuine people would join this party.
I have a different take on this. Before trying to root out corruption, have we ever thought what forces people to be corrupt ? Especially amongst the lower ranks in government offices, the police and other government servants. The sheer population size and the difference between the "haves and the have-nots" as also the low salary scale for low ranking government officials may be the reason for them to ask for bribes. I went to the Registration office for my child's birth certificate. It was a small, stuffy room with an old man in his 50's sitting behind a desk, almost surrounded with piles of dusty files and a crowd of people breathing down his neck. For each application, he had to find the respective file, search for the number etc and then make a certificate. In the hot weather, that poor guy had just a small table fan for comfort. How much do you think this clerk would be earning each month - 15k max 25k ? I wonder if he is even able to make ends meet with the amount the government gives as salary. After all, he too would be paying as much as we do for his groceries, milk, travel, medical etc. I am sure he would be forced to ask for bribes just to survive. Same goes for the traffic cop who puts in more than 12 hours a day and gets peanuts as salary. How is he supposed to take care of his family ? He too would be having school going kids or old parents to look after. So while those on the top receive a fat pay packet and other incentives, those at the bottom have almost nothing at all. Also the redtape, the antique laws, the slow judicial process and the time it takes to get anything done in this country further increases the scope of corruption. How many of us have not willing offered a bribe to the traffic cop or to the clerk at the RTO or to the tout outside any government office to get our work done faster ? People pay because either they want their work done faster or they dont want their application to be rejected or delayed due to non payment of bribe. I guess until something is done to bridge the gap between the rich n the poor, corruption will continue at lower levels. Neither Anna nor his honesty nor the best of Lokpal will help. When faced with the question of survival, people will continue to search for avenues to make a fast buck. And who will monitor those in the Lokpal ? Where will the money come to pay for the salary of these additional officers ? With the power they are going to wield, what are the chances of them not blackmailing the corrupt - after all infinite power does corrupt. Lets hope that something good comes out of Anna's Team joining Indian politics. kylie
Dear Kylie those are valid points but team anna is targetting big fishes first we need to take diagnostic approach for that we need govt help like you said lokpal management will not be possible because in Karnataka too lok ayuktha pointed at current cm because he had backing but he overlooked the others equally corrupt whose backing he had, then efficiency of lokayutha would have been emulate worthy... Also inspite of bribe their life has not become easy.. So there is always a bit of doubt but taking positive step is the need of the day...
While corruption at any level needs to be curbed, the motive for the movement for a strong Jan Lokpal Bill is the rampant corruption that is being indulged in cutting across party lines and the bureaucracy. Since independence there have been scores of scams in our country looting several billion rupees. Of late, it has come to such a pass that nothing is without a scam involving enormous amount of taxpayers money. Since the premier investigation agency - CBI, acts virtually as a back office for the ruling party, THERE HAS NOT BEEN A SINGLE CONVINCTION TO-DATE FOR ANY OF THE SCAMS. Every investigation that the CBI is undertaking appears to be only an eye-wash, because it has to act on dictates of ruling party/Italian mafia. The movement of Team Anna is demanding a strong independent investigating agency that is both transparent and accountable. The Jan Lokpal Bill as envisaged by Team Anna speaks of several checks and balances, right from the selection of LokPal to its functioning. Politicians of our country are so used to looting that no one wants a strong Jan Lokpal Bill. Let me dig in to my old mails and come back with the merits and de-merits argued by both sides on bringing in this legislation, which will throw more light. Who can forget the manner in which this government stage-managed a drama to ensure that the Lokpal Bill was never passed in the earlier Rajya Sabha session, tacitly supported by the Rajya Sabha Chairman - Hamid Ansari. The government is now repaying its gratitude by nominating him for the 2nd term as Vice President!!
Not Only that RP the sheer audacity with which they are indulging in maligning team members is disgusting and one hopeless thing is.... not a single party is there for us to choose which with goodwill works for India... Modi seems to have done good for Gujarath but we are not living in Gujarath to know it for sure... but the very party he belongs too is bent on snubbing him... God only knows how all these end...
