Lokpal Bill is no magic wand

The cacophony of noises, sound bytes, sloganeering, views and counter views emanating from the Ramlila Maidan in Delhi needs to be deciphered with a cool and dispassionate head.

There is no doubting the core issue — Anna Hazare's crusade against corruption has caught the imagination of a young and middle-class India. Period. The tumbling out of scams from the UPA-II's corruption-tainted cupboard has had people across all classes and spectrums seered.

Add to this, the frustration of the ordinary citizens that they just cannot get anything — a a birth, caste or any other certificate, a land patta , and so on, from our sarkari offices — without giving bribe. This anger and angst has been building up for a long time.

Grassroots frustration

But the frustration at the grassroots has reached a tipping point because it found a crusader in Anna Hazare… a simple, soft-spoken man of few words, who came to the centrestage without any political agenda. That is important as the country's faith in our politicians has hit the nadir . That is why when the Opposition comes forth and gives homilies in support of Anna's anti-corruption crusade, they actually take away some credit from it.

So far so good. It feels great to see the government of the day which has messed up in handling the latest campaign from Anna — first arresting him and then letting him off and tying itself up in knots while the Gandhian dug his heels in and refused to leave Tihar jail till his conditions were met — being put on the mat. But next comes shaky ground. To believe or even hope that the Jan Lokpal Bill, which Team Anna has drafted or the constitution of a strong Lokpal, by itself, will become a panacea for all ills, is to live in a fool's paradise. You may ridicule the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, on several counts, and be justified too, but he has a point when he says he has no magic wand to end corruption.

Sane, solid voices

The public mood is so severe that Dr Singh was lambasted for saying this. But, since then, saner and highly respected voices, across civil society, have spoken out against the arm-twisting tactics of Team Anna — that it is either my way or the highway!

Social activist and member of the National Campaign for People's Right to Information (NCPRI), Ms Aruna Roy, whose credentials are impeccable, as well as the NCPRI co-member, Mr Harsh Mander, have warned against the danger of adopting Team Anna's stance during this ongoing struggle. Ms Roy told a press conference that she had presented the NCPRI team's version of the Lokpal Bill to the Parliament Standing Committee.

On Mr Arvind Kejriwal's invite to go to Ramlila Maidan and debate both versions of the Bill, she said this could have been feasible in the pre-legislative phase, but once a draft goes to Parliament, it was better to suggest ideas and formulations to the Standing Committee. “There is a danger in discussing things out of Parliament, as tomorrow there can be a huge mobilisation of any kind of extremist group; they can demand anything, nothing will take place in Parliament and it will all happen outside”.

Cautioning against meddling with fundamental parliamentary rights, she was quoted by The Hindu , “Every time we have tampered with Constitutional rights, this country has suffered. We only have to think of what happened during Emergency and subsequently.” Added Mr Mander, “Nobody has the right to say we alone are right. Democracy is about recognising and allowing multiple and diverse views.”

Do it strategically

Another respected voice from Corporate India, now in government domain as the chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India, Mr Nandan Nilekani, says he could understand the frustration that had rallied such huge numbers against corruption.

But, any movement to tackle corruption has to be handled in “a much more holistic and strategic manner.” There was both “big ticket” and “retail” corruption, he said, defining as “simplistic” the belief that “you pass some magical Bill and corruption is going to go away”.

On Sunday evening, apparently enthused by the lakhs of people who joined his protest, Anna Hazare upped the ante saying that this government should either bring in the Jan Lokpal Bill by August 30 or quit. There are reports that back-door talks are on between the government emissaries and Anna's team. In a long time, the UPA Government has done a wise thing; its spokesmen have gone quiet.

To cut to the chase, will I stand up and be counted as a supporter of this anti-corruption crusade? Of course. Having only recently filed my IT returns, as millions of salaried, middle-class Indians have, I bristled at the idea of a chunk of my hard-earned, transparent income, cut each month through TDS, and whatever little interest earned through other investments, going straight into the pockets of our corrupt politicians.

There is little doubt that instead of developing infrastructure, services, better health, education, sanitation, and so on, for the underprivileged, much of our taxes are being siphoned off to satisfy the greed of politicians.

But the way to do it is not by putting a gun against a democratically-elected government's head and bypassing due parliamentary processes.

And, in the process, become vulnerable to the danger of another set of crafty and, perhaps, equally corrupt, politicians stepping in to take us for yet another ride.

Response may be sent to rasheeda@thehindu.co.in and blfeedback@thehindu.co.in

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