For all its blemishes and shortcomings, the passage of the Lokpal and Lokayuktas Bill in the Lok Sabha represents a historic moment. Assuming the proposed legislation goes through the Upper House as well, the country will finally have independent anti-corruption ombudsmen — the Lokpal at the Centre and the Lokayuktas at the State. Their establishment would give common Indian citizens a forum to take their complaints relating to abuse of office by public servants, including ministers, legislators and government employees. True, there already exists an internal mechanism in the form of vigilance and anti-corruption authorities within the departments concerned. But this has not been effective, except in the most blatant and pettiest acts of corruption. Above all, the system simply does not have the moral stature to go after perverse or arbitrary exercise of discretionary power by those in authority. It is also not blunt against deliberate inaction driven by considerations of personal profit. To the extent the Lokpal or Lokayuktas provide an independent platform for citizens to report misconduct by public servants, the enactment of even the Bill that received the Lower House's assent on Tuesday is a step forward towards good governance.

That said, it is difficult to ignore some of the glaring limitations of the Bill slated to become law. An ombudsman has to be not just independent, but also effective. In this case, effectiveness is compromised by the Lokpal or the Lokayuktas having no investigation wings of their own. The ‘Inquiry Wings' under them can only conduct ‘preliminary inquiry' to ascertain whether a prima facie case exists to proceed against any particular official. Once that is decided, the actual investigation job would be with the Central Vigilance Commission or the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). The ombudsman would have no effective control over the agencies to which it can merely ‘refer' complaints for further investigation. That makes it largely a post office to receive and forward complaints concerning official malfeasance. It is made worse by the investigating agencies (especially CBI) themselves not being given any functional autonomy or independence from government interference, leave alone coming under the Lokpal's jurisdiction, as demanded by anti-graft crusaders. On top of that, the absence of constitutional status to the Lokpal/Lokayuktas denies them even the protection that the Election Commission or the Comptroller and Auditor-General of India today enjoy. The fault for this, though, lies not with the Government, but the Opposition, which scuttled the parallel Constitution Amendment Bill that would have accorded the ombudsmen this status.

But despite all these flaws, it is better to at least make a beginning of having a Lokpal in place. The credit for this definitely goes to Anna Hazare's campaign, which marked the coming to age of the so-called civil society in India and its ability to exert pressure on lawmakers. What is needed is to keep this pressure up so as to make the Lokpal a genuinely independent and effective anti-corruption watchdog.

Published on December 28, 2011