The Jan Lokpal Bill was introduced in the parliament on August 4, 2011. The Bill provides for the establishment of an Ombudsman or Lokpal for enquiring into complaints of corruption against certain public servants. In a country where there are more than 34,700 laws, do we need a new law to fight Corruption? What about even if we pass the Jan Lokpal Bill and there is no proper implementation? These questions need to be answered in order to dig deep on the issue of corruption in India. Can Jan Lokpal Bill be a panacea for all ills? Presently there are anti corruption agencies like Lokayuktas, Central Vigilance Commision (CVC), Central Bureau of Investigation, etc who are doing a fine job and needs to be strengthen and not bulldozed by a oligarchic structure of Lokpal institution. Booker Prize winner Arundhati Roy calls Jan Lokpal Bill a very regressive kind of law which concentrates the power in the hands of few members which she calls a ‘Parallel Oligarchy’. Corruption is a manifestation of temptation and what if the members can’t resist the temptation and become corrupt themselves. In a country of 1.3 billion where everyone wants to be a God and Hero, concentrating power can have dangerous authoritarian consequences. Another point to be emphasized is that Corruption needs to be defined in a more broader concept against the prevelant westernized definition. In the land of Gandhi, anyone taking more than his need, is in a way governed by Greed and is therefore corrupt. The private sector needs to brought under the ambit of anti corruptions measures.
Why suddenly the issue of Corruption and Jan Lokpal cropped up now? Was there not corruption before? The interest the corruption rhetoric is generating needs to be probed further. In the last 2 years the conviction and jail of big fish in the corruption field is a phenomenon not seen in India before and when things are rolling in the right direction why this movement against corruption in the form of Jan Lokpal Bill. Booker Prize winner Arundhati Roy says that these movements are funded by NGOs who are funded by the Western agencies like Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation and World Bank for further penetration of International Capital. I would like to quote from an article in Frontline by Prabhat Patnaik- “The transition from democracy to what some have called “corporatocracy”,…. which is an integral part of the rise to hegemony of globalised finance capital. The Hazare group's assault on parliamentary institutions and exclusive emphasis on corruption within the state machinery, to the exclusion of the corporate sector and civil society groups, could well turn out to be, albeit unwittingly, a part of this agenda of converting our democracy into a ‘corporatocracy’.”[1]
Does so called ‘Team Anna’ represents the whole India? Its certainly not a peoples movement, many people came to see a kind of a reality show and feeded by RSS and Bhartiya Janata Party cadres. One of main consequences of this Hindu right wing open support to the Anna Andolan has been that the Muslims have boycotted this movement. This is going to do a major damage to the Secular fabric of the country and the issue of Corruption. Muslims who by nature of their poor representation in the Services and their low education profile are in fact more potent victims of corruption than their Hindu counterparts. Imagine what harm this movement has done that now Hindus and Muslims are divided on the issue of fighting corruption in India.
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