Lokpal or Jokepal?

      Transparency  Revolution Please!

   If an independent, foolproof Lokpal is impossible, give up the futile exercise. Simply enforce transparency in day to day functioning of government from top to bottom. It will dispense with the need even of a Lokpal or an Ombudsman!


      Should the Prime Minister be brought under the Lokpal Bill? That seems to be the moot question agitating the attention of the Political class, media barons and vested interest groups in India today. To me it looks, we are posing the wrong question. The right question instead should be: How can anyone in India be exempted from the purview of Lokpal, if its purpose is to stem and wipe out corruption from the whole of India?

       To err is human. That includes, everyone born of man and woman, even the Pope, who is said to be “infallible”, but   in certain circumstances only. Coming to Indian democracy, its guardians have been found corrupt and crooked. The fact that something has happened, is more than proof that it can happen again. (Ab esse ad posse Valet illation – fact proves the possibility) High court judges and top politicians have been caught red handed for massive corruption charges... If they are to be exempted, for what purpose is this bill? For whom is it? For the righteous? They don’t need it.  The government already uses the CBI and Vigilance wing to protect its vested interest. It is the innocent people who are fleeced and need protection. 

       In the case of judges, some of their own spokes men are vociferous in saying that 25% of them are corrupt. Exempting them would be tantamount to giving them licence to loot with gay abandon.  What about the President of India or the parliament itself said to be the supreme machinery to make laws?  Laws we know are made for law makers! We have seen, and we are seeing how they – the government group in Lokpal drafting committee -- are so sensitive,   huddle together and object to “transparency” as a threat to their secret wheeling and dealing.

        People hide only when they have something rotten to hide and are ashamed to come out in the open.  That is why we have to give top credit to Wikileaks which is the first to come out with the need for “Transparency International” and lately to A. K. Antony’s plea for more transparency in public life. Yes if we can achieve the ideal of transparency we can dispense even with a Lokpal bill or an Ombudsman to watch over anyone’s conduct in public life.

Third Eye or Transparency

        What is needed is to bring the “Third Eye” out into the open and fix it in the firmament like the blazing sun which no one in their right senses can dare to deny, ignore or hide from.  Believers call it “God” watching from above, or the “Voice of Conscience” calling out or warning from within when the crooked try to move about furtively. Is the present joint drafting committee  of government and civil society capable of bringing out a bill to act as the Third Eye, since  we are certain now, there are uncivilized elements in both groups? There will be such in every manmade group. So, we cannot go on creating watch dogs over watchdogs endlessly.

         Politics is the art of the possible, not the impossible. If a foolproof mechanism or authority which is above board is impossible to come by, we have to settle for the second best. In principle lawmakers in parliament should not be above the laws they make if they are to have moral validity and credibility. Source of all parliamentary privileges, they often forget, is the consent of the

electorate. So all should be ready to subject themselves to the laws that are enacted and resist the temptation to become “elected” or “unelected dictators”.

 

           How to achieve this goal?   We can reach it only through a long process of tedious, honest and ruthlessly frank public discussion. The minimum that we can agree seems to be, that we start with giving the envisioned 11 member Lokpal team full freedom and authority to investigate and expose even the highest public servant in the country short of giving it executive powers. The executive powers have to be in the hands of the elected government. But the government should desist from its much maligned tactic of calling a dog a bad name just to hang it. It should not cry foul like “contempt of court” or “contempt of authority” just to take action to curb Lokpal’s freedom to investigate or to curtail its freedom of speech to make public its findings however embarrassing they may appear to the government. When that is done, it will act like the “third eye” or the torch light that exposes the nakedness of wrong doers to the full view of the public as an effective deterrent...

            This kind of transparency should succeed at least to cut to size the monster of corruption having a hay day to wander about and devour anyone it chooses under cover of darkness called secrecy. So in my view “transparency” enforced  at all levels of  government’s functioning is the sure way to bring down l corruption, although it was objected to at the very start by Kapil Sibal and company when the drafting committee wanted to conduct its discourse in full view of civil society.

Overstress on Parliament

          But to overstress the constitutional authority of the parliament to legislate in a democracy at the cost of belittling the voice of the general public expressed as a murmur or a massive protest is ill-forbidding. Peaceful protests took shape and spread like wild fire when Anna Hazare, the right man at the right time took charge. It is gaining strength day by day. To get elected, often by hook or crook, is not a licence to loot for five years. All know too well how elections are conducted and won, often with  money power, muscle power, misinformation and downright cheating, in which case some are caught and disqualified by  courts. Even the duly elected representatives are to be, not dictators, but public servants taking orders from the people who are to be the real masters in any democracy. Hitler and Mussolini were elected and became dictators.

           How often has there been a hue and cry for enacting a law to recall elected representatives who misbehave arrogantly or cross over to other parties to stay in power after throwing in the face of people the promises they made to get elected. How long these turn coats have to be tolerated? Five long years every time they get elected? Don’t they even collude with like minded for selfish reasons to bring a non-trust vote to banish duly elected governments? Civil society is forced to bear all these with patience.  But once elected they can’t have any patience to dialogue with the electorate.

          Therefore the argument of Kapil Sibal, that “with or without” the inputs of Civil Society group the government will bring out a Lockpal bill in time sounds more dictatorial than civil. How often these MPs have been paralysing the functioning of the parliament at the expense of the helpless public. Left to itself the government has been hatching the bill sitting on it for decades and what has come out of it, except scams and mind boggling ones that make the people go wild and desperate like Naxalite uprisings here and there in the country?

Civil Society Belittled

         Nor can the civil society group be dismissed for the lame reason, they are not elected and so don’t represent the people. How do many MLAs represent their constituency when they scrape through in a three or four cornered contest with even one-third of the votes polled? If the civil society group is unelected and  don’t represent anyone, it is for the government to prove it by putting the drafts of the government group and that of the civil society up for a sufficiently long public discussion and referendum on their relative merits. But the people in any case are not going to settle this time for the farce of a bill sent through make-believe rituals of consultation while the government speaks in a commanding tone and is adamant not to allow an independent agency to probe into instances of corruption at top levels in politics and corporate business circles. It is a pity that Rahul Gandhi has not pitched in to electrify his youth wing to lend support to Hazare team to clean up the Aegean stables of Indian democracy!

        At the time of this writing the two sections of the drafting committee are in perfect disagreement on basics and so are planning to send two drafts with conflict of interest to the Union Cabinet that will probably make a watered down mixed version to be presented to the parliament where the vested interest group of politicians are sure to use it to their advantage. This should not be allowed to happen. So let the government give a rather long gestation period of public discussion to both the drafts and conduct a referendum on both drafts to know which one is more acceptable to the people of India with or without deletions and additions suggested by the public and ruling class. If something is worth doing, it is worth doing it well instead of doing it for name’s sake!

The writer can be contacted at jkottoor@asianetindia.com