The Lokpal’s last gasp

The UPA government’s contentious Lokpal is not in its last lap as the media would have it; to all intents and purposes it is in its last gasp. If the motivation underlying the bill was eradication of corruption, the government could have done a lot to shed the bill of its frills and strengthen it with prudence by giving other political parties and civil society the much needed democratic space.

By and large, and barring a few exceptions, India’s bumbledom, middlemen, fixers, political class, and so on have a lot to lose from the implementation of a strong anti-corruption law.  Seen thus, the government’s failure to get its hurriedly hashed Lokpal Bill constitutional status in the Lok Sabha and the status of a mere bill as passed by the Rajya Sabha was partly its own making and partly the making of vested interests.

As any anti-corruption law has to be above caste and communal considerations, politicising the Lokpal on the pretext of making it representative was a clear indication of the government’s mendacity.

Ever since UPA II came to power it has been forcing the nation to lurch from crisis to crisis because of its combative, confrontationist, politically opportunistic, and undemocratic postures. 

When the 2G spectrum scam surfaced, the ministry hid under the constitutionally non-existent and patently absurd ‘coalition dharma’; and unleashed Kapil Sibal as the ‘devil’s advocate’ to silence the nation with his legal sophistry: he is on record claiming that in the 2G scam the loss was zero.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s pet phrase ‘Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion’ to argue that he has nothing to hide has been self-centric and has not addressed the more important issue of whether as head of the Union cabinet Singh has been able to uphold its integrity. 

The obstinacy about the appointment of PJ Thomas as head of the Central Vigilance Commission was a case in point. Thomas had to go in disgrace at the behest of the Supreme Court. The obstinacy about persisting with Aadhaar despite repeated reports that it is a national disaster which may make every Indian more vulnerable, and rejection of the National Identification Authority of India Bill (NIA Bill) by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance, is another case in point.

All said, as corruption has eaten into the vitals, if India’s unwashed millions are to get anything as a level playing field in its economy, polity, and society, there should be justice, fairness, and openness in its governance structures and governance systems. This can happen only with drastic changes in the present political system and its bureaucratic labyrinth.

However, as corruption is only one manifestation of a larger and more complex social malaise, the rejection of constitutional status to the Lokpal is a clear indication that corruption cannot be fought head on without fighting other evils which aid, abet, and feed on it.

Eradicating corruption entails wiping out the culture of corruption, or what Gunnar Myrdal characterised in Indian context as the ‘folklore of corruption.’ That should remind us about Dr BR Ambedkar’s prophetic statement in the Constituent Assembly that democracy is only a top dressing on an Indian soil, which is essentially undemocratic. Even 60 years down the line democracy in India remains only a top dressing — of the rich, by the rich and for the rich.

So long as this continues, eradication of corruption will remain a pipe dream. Once all prerequisites to make governance democratic, transparent, accountable, and people-centric, which are also sine qua non for developing a full-blooded democracy, are firmly in place, corruption will not have a life of its own, which will in turn make any Lokpal redundant.  Until such time we need more and more Team Annas and their anti-corruption campaigns.
Only mass leaders with their ears to the ground can bring about these prerequisites. They cannot be the Manmohan Singhs, whose lack of feedback and grassroots level contacts have cut them off from the masses. If, as Machiavelli said, the first impression one gets of a ruler and of his brains is from seeing the men he has about him, Singh should have resigned long ago.

For, what better advice can a PM expect from the Kaushik Basus who advocate legalising bribe-giving and from the Montek Singh Ahluwalias who insist on the definition of poverty line at Rs32 per person per day?

The author is a sociologist and commentator on public affairs
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