Chaitanya Chinchlikar hauls attention on the not- so- necessary outcomes of Jan Lokpal bill and to redeem RTI bill in a stronger way.
Jan lokpal bill – Is it needed? Possibly yes. As we have seen what the lokayukta has achieved in the many states that it exists, maybe a lokpal is needed at the centre as a parallel redressal cell to the government system for the common man.
We don’t know how many people marching on the streets or shirking work and chilling out at Ramlila grounds have read all the four drafts of the lokpal bills. Well I have and while Aruna Roy’s makes the most sense, since it is probably never going to be heard. There are few queries which always kept me on my toes to get their answer.
A) What is the guarantee that the Lokpal structure itself will not be corrupt? There is none, and hence – it will achieve nothing to weed out corruption both at the lower levels and at the upper ones.
B) Now lets ponder on some major clash-points between the two parties:
a. Lower civil servants under the lokpal – It is highly impractical and would involve creation of a whole parallel bureaucracy to keep a check on the existing one. And who is to say that people will not misuse this and file frivolous complaints against honest public servants for political reasons. Further, if the lokayukta himself is a corrupt, then its like sending a thief to catch a thief – both will collude and steal bigger.
b. Parliamentarians under lokpal for acts committed inside parliament – This is moronic. if this clause is agreed to, the country will come to a standstill – no new bill which can be classified as ‘borderline’ will be passed or rejected coz parliamentarians would be worried about being pulled up by the lokpal (could be for genuine reasons or politically motivated ones). So gone is the progressive 6%-9% GDP growth.
c. PM under lokpal – This is good in principle but highly impractical. It would basically meant that we would need to have a huge bench-strength of PM candidates as on a monthly basis, the current PM may get pulled up by the lokpal and then have to resign for ‘moral’ reasons.
d. Judiciary under lokpal – Why? There is already an impeachment and it is currently being exercised for Justice Sen. So why the change is required?
e. Lokayukta can impose punishment / penalties – So what will the judiciary do?
f. NGOs are not within the scope of the lokpal – Probably, the easiest medium for laundering black money and are comfortably cocooned under the ‘non-profit’ and ‘for public service’ cloak. So why would those not be included?
About the obvious public support for this street gang – People at large have obviously felt betrayed by the Kalmadis and Rajas and Marans of India. What team Anna has successfully done is linked the Jan lokpal bill to corruption and hence led to the public outcry. What most of the people hanging out at Ramlila grounds or at other places across India don’t understand is that it has nothing to do with corruption. The Jan lokpal bill is a ‘process’ bill, which will never go through parliament and if it does, will end up achieve zero. Probably, the single largest weapon against corruption for the common man is the RTI bill, which has already been passed.
Lastly, the process that team Anna has gone to stand on their points was irrational. We are not sure how engaged is Anna with the facts, with the laws and with the realities. It does not sound like his opinions as we have never heard him talk coherently on any of the detailed points of his bill. Its really the people around him and his team who are completely mis-using Anna’s historical bank of integrity and they’re the ones who should be horse-whipped with a horsewhip.
