As expected, the government has presented its version of the Lok Pal bill in the Parliament showing its true intentions and proving once again that the reason why they gave hearing to Anna and team in the first place in April earlier this year was to secure its position during the impending assembly elections in the four states and the UT and now that no such political compulsions are there, the government went ahead and firstly crushed Baba Ramdev’s movement and has now gone ahead and showed the door to Anna and team during the Jan Lokpal negotiations. One could say, Anna should have known this as he has known the politicians of this country very well but as he said, he trusted the government’s promise to deliver Jan Lokpal, a trust that was broken and Team Anna has learned a lesson at a steep cost.
Looking at the government’s draft of the Lokpal Bill that has been tabled in the Parliament, it is quite apparent that the government wants a very weak and ineffective piece of legislation so that future governments (of which they hope to be one of the constituents!) can wantonly continue with the corruption acts without any hindrance. Whilst the government would want us to believe that the Bill they have tabled in the Parliament is a very sincere effort on its part and that they and Team Anna have differences of opinion only on the subject of inclusion of Prime Minister and Judiciary under the ambit of Lokpal, the truth is nothing less than shocking as the details of the tabled Bill emerge – here are some dilutions for us to ponder over:
- Of the 12 million government employees that are there, the Bill will cover only 65,000 or about 0.5% of them, which can tell us how effectively the Bill will help curbing babu driven corruption in this country – the fact is that politicians get a cut from the babu driven corruption chain is an obvious reason why they are excluded.
- The Bill forbids the Lokpal to file an FIR against an accused official until the accused has been given a hearing and to top it all, on completing the investigations; the Lokpal should give another hearing to the accused before filing a charge sheet in the court. This seems to show that the accused is the privileged one whom the Lokpal is duty bound to protect! Further, the fact that charge sheet contents are disclosed to the accused would lead to weakening of the case against the accused as well as compromising the position of the whistleblower.
- The Bill provides that a counter case be filed against the whistleblower and he would be liable to be punished severely if the complaint was found "false and frivolous or vexatious." Worse still is the provision that the minimum jail term for a "false or frivolous" complaint is two years, while the accused public servant in the event of conviction for corruption could get as little as six months. This is clearly aimed at discouraging the whistleblowers and ensuring that no one speaks up.
- Per the amended Bill, removal of chairperson and members of Lokpal requires government’s go-ahead, which essentially makes the Lokpal dependent on the government, and hence the basic tenet of its formation and functioning that is its independence shall be compromised.
- The Bill also divests Lokpal of its contempt powers so that it could take action against public servants who do not cooperate with its inquiry or investigation, thereby further diluting Bill’s effectiveness.
- Further, in contradiction to criminal law where an accused is not allowed to access any evidence till the charge sheet is filed against him, government’s Lokpal Bill allows the accused to inspect documents and obtain copies right at the preliminary stage when an investigation is proposed to be initiated thereby allowing the accused to prepare his defense whilst the Lokpal prepares the charge sheet against him!
As I said before, the accused here is a privileged person and the Lokpal Bill tabled by the government ensures that this status of accused is maintained at all stages of his trial, right from being an accused (as he gets the evidence and therefore can prepare his defense in advance!) till he is punished (as even if his guilt is proved, he is likely to get lesser quantum of punishment vis-à-vis a whistleblower who will land with a bigger punishment unless he has a watertight case against the accused). It is very evident that the issue Team Anna has with this draft Bill is not just non-inclusion of the Prime Minister and Judiciary but much more and we the citizens of this country are made to believe through media that Team Anna and the government does not agree on only one point.
Clearly, the Bill as tabled by the government in the Parliament is not Lokpal we as citizens of this country want but Jokepal as rightly christened by Team Anna. It is also a sad reflection of this government’s arrogance and misplaced confidence that it can fool all the citizens of this country for all the time.
So, what’s our recourse – come August 16th, Anna and team have promised revival of the agitation and have called the movement as the second struggle of freedom, which in many respects it certainly is. Obviously, the government has made up its mind to crush this movement, however, aside the government, there are a lot of commentators who term Anna’s crusade as one that is against parliamentary democracy and these intellectuals and well known personalities, including a celebrity editor of a so-called “anti-establishment” newspaper have over the last few months written reams and reams of paper stating that Anna’s methods are not sane and amounts to nothing but blackmail – for a moment, even if we were to concede that Anna’s method may appear to some stretched imaginations as one that of “blackmailing”, but then, what I am amused of is that these same commentators do not suggest a way out of this corruption conundrum we find ourselves in – they do not criticize the government version of the Bill and are very well reconciled to status quo system which could mean only one thing and that is the mainstream media (both print and electronic) in this country are not neutral and that again is something that was always known, wasn’t it? Clearly, there are vested interests at work here and the poison of corruption has seeped deep in the fabric of our nation – we have gotten so used to the corruption around us that it appears absolutely normal to us and unless we break the shackles, we as a nation will stagnate, decline, decay and disappear.
Therefore, change is inevitable and the only constant and we need not worry much about who moved our cheese and move out of our comfort zone to embrace change – a change for a better India and Anna’s movement starting August 16th may well be the beginning of this change. Recently, I read up in one of the articles that said that if 10% of population participates in a movement then the tipping point is achieved and the movement can potentially transform into a revolution – is this possible starting August 16th? For the sake of this nation and our future generations, we should hope this happens.
