A lot is being spoken about the Jan Lokpal
bill. I for one am a great admirer of Anna Hazare and his intentions. And well
even before he became such a big face of this anti corruption movement, his
work in and around Ahmednagar is worth mentioning. However today I see myself
questioning his moves. No – I do not question his integrity. He is a noble man
and a true Gandhian. But what exactly is he asking for was my question.
Corruption is bad, it should be stopped, black money stacked abroad should be brought
in, the Lokpal should have complete authority over everyone... so on and so
forth... But honestly this is not something so different from what our
politicians say... In fact if any of us cared enough to even listen to our
sessions of parliament (it airs on Loksabha TV) we would know that this is
exactly what the government is saying. Pranab Mukherjee in his speech even
spoke of how black money stacked abroad is a major issue. In fact India has
already signed an agreement with Switzerland demanding that details of accounts
be given – this however needs to be ratified by the government and so could not
come into force immediately. The de-regularization of 500 and 1000 rupee notes
is something that the government wanted to do way before Anna brought it up –
because of the number of counterfeits that were doing the rounds... So well the
way I see it at least there doesn’t seem to be too much difference on core
values of acceptance... How these values and goals are achieved is where Anna
and the government seem to be locking horns...
Anna’s stance is very clear –
give the Lokpal complete authority to investigate anyone. The advantage of this
I guess is obvious – that anyone, irrespective of whether s/he is the PM of our
country can be brought to task. But the disadvantage I think is being
overlooked. Hmmm... to explain I’d like to explain our Constitution and its
provisions to those of us who are less aware... The Indian constitution was
written by a committee that was headed by Ambedkar. The same Ambedkar, whose
views were pretty antithetical to those of the all powerful Congress. He
therefore drafted the constitution very carefully. Every authority had a
counter authority and no one was given ultimate power. The three wings of the
state machinery - the Legislature, judiciary and executive worked in parallel
and each one had the ability to check the others authority. The parliament
could make laws and would require 200+ elected representatives pass it. The
executive would execute these laws and the judiciary would ensure that the laws
were executed correctly. Not just that, the judiciary had the right to question
the laws itself if it was going against the constitution of the country. So
with such a seemingly full proof system how did so much corruption creep in?
Isn’t there already enough machinery in place (if it works correctly) to ensure
that there isn’t corruption. If our system did really work like it was intended
to – would there be so much corruption?
Hmmm... I really doubt. The problem
with India today is not the dearth of laws, it is the dearth of proper
execution of these laws. So let us say
we do have a very strong Lokpal – is that really answering our prayers. How
much longer will it take for people to find loopholes in this new system? How
much time before we have yet another body that is failing in its purpose? The
truth is that unless each one of us takes it upon ourselves to make this
“system” better, it never will. Unless the "Jan" are a part of the Lokpal, simply changing the name is not going to make a difference. So the next time you are caught by a traffic
cop on the road refuse to pay him a bribe. The next time someone is charging
you over MRP for a beverage take the time out to register a complaint. The next
time you have a chance to make a small difference in this extremely corrupt
system – TAKE IT... Cause otherwise there is no number of laws or Lokpals that
can save our country ---- Jai Hind
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