This could well be the year of the Lokpal. With the Lokpal Bill
having passed both houses of Parliament, all that remains is for the
president to sign it before it becomes a law.
Of course, the
political class can still have some tricks up its sleeve because the
Union Home Ministry is the one that will write the rules of the Act and
sometimes these are so cunningly crafted that they undermine the intent
of the legislation.
Even so, the Lokpal Bill will
be a new mechanism to fast-track probes against allegedly corrupt
government officials — the prime minister, cabinet ministers, chief
ministers, MPs, and the staff of state-funded outfits.
If
there was one legislation, which has in recent times, truly come from
the people, it is the Lokpal Bill. For decades, the ruling elite has
sought to make anti-corruption legislation toothless. But Anna Hazare’s
famous fast and the upsurge in favour of the Lokpal Bill compelled the
ruling party, as well as the principal Opposition, the BJP, to push the
bill.
In that sense, the main thrust of the legislation is to
have some means of dealing with the soaring levels of corruption in a
country where the existing mechanisms have been ineffective. Complaints
registered under the Lokpal will have to be acted on within 60 days and
would be prosecuted in special courts.
The arrival of the
Lokpal will be an important development in the Indian polity. Of course,
the Aam Aadmi Party insists that only the Jan Lokpal Bill will
satisfactorily curb corruption. However, critics are right when they say
that the Jan Lokpal idea is a bit over the top. We need to ensure that
the Lokpal remedy does not become worse that the disease.
In
recent years, at various points in time, we have seen how certain
constitutional bodies — the Supreme Court and the Comptroller and
Auditor General being two examples — have tended to assume powers that
actually belong only to the executive. But such was the public mood
against the government, that no one gave heed to the serious damage that
was done to the constitutional system. Maintaining the constitutional
balance is an important part of
our democracy.
There
has been a tendency, especially in the Congress party, to believe that
legislating a promise is tantamount to actually delivering on it. The
reality is otherwise. In its two tenures, the UPA government has passed
the Right to Information (2005); Right to Work (2005); Forest Rights Act
(2006), Right to Education (2009); Right to Food (2013) and the
Prohibition of Manual Scavenging Act (2013). But in all these areas,
there is a long way to go in the effective implementation of the acts.
What India needs to understand is that legislation or institutions by
themselves do not bring about social change. Countries of Europe or the
United States, too, had a history of political corruption. But over the
years they have cleaned up their act considerably because of popular
sentiment, as well as institutions and laws.
It is not as
though corruption does not still occur there. But it is not as
all-pervasive as corruption has become in India and the penalty for
getting caught is heavy and the guilty are more effectively prosecuted.
Corruption weighs heavily in India. Virtually every major and minor
deal, be it for an entrepreneur to set up a steel plant, or a
rehri-wallah selling vegetables on the street corner, money must be
paid.
Corruption in the area of defence purchases is in a
class of its own. This is evident from even the minor deal for the
purchase of 12 Augusta Westland helicopters which the government
recently terminated. A collateral casualty of the case could well be an
army brigadier who offered to fudge the trial records of the competition
relating to the acquisition of 197 light utility and surveillance
helicopters in exchange for five million euros.
The big areas
of corruption are well known — sale and purchase of land and real
estate development (Adarsh), in the award of contracts, income tax
assessments, mineral allotments (think of the Coal allocation scam),
transfers and sale of positions, purchase and sale of medicines (think
of the National Rural Health Mission scam) and so on.
Clearly, the first target of the Lokpal system will have to be the
police. There is a Latin saying, Quis custodiet insos custodies (Who
will guard the guards themselves?) India’s police is rotten to the core
and this is evident to every aware citizen. Most people believe that the
police are hand-in-glove with the criminals on one hand, and the
politicians on the other.
It was through targeting the police
in Hong Kong that the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC)
cut its teeth and enabled the emergence of the modern city which is
considered one of the cleanest in the world. But it was not an easy task
and the process also revealed the problems that arise when you give so
much power to one body.
However, at the end of the day, what
matters is the quality of political leadership that is provided to the
anti-corruption crusade.
Mid Day January 7 2014
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
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