New year resolution on Lokpal

Email sent to Politicians and Civil Society members on 02-Jan-2012
Happy new year to everybody.

2011 was a terrific year in the history of Indian politics. For the first time civil society was actively involved in drafting bill along with ministers. It is the beginning of establishment of participatory democracy, new found word for 2011, in India. In spite of confrontation, hiccups and mutual abuse between politicians and civil society members, Indian democracy is a clear winner. Let’s analyze Anna’s movement to bring strong anti corruption law more objectively in political perspective.

- Team Anna perhaps realized that Congress is not their enemy no 1. Regional party will never allow a uniform strong Lokayukta in the state. Mamata Banerjee is as dictatorial and arrogant as Jyoti Basu. She knows that her party workers are no less corrupt than CPM workers. So, strong Lokayukta will be a death warrant for her party.

- Congress and BJP must stop calling each other corrupt. For every mischief of congress there is a mischief of BJP and vice versa. So, none of them can take moral high ground.

- If BJP and Congress don’t work together, it will benefit regional parties only. Let there be a coalition government between Congress and BJP and post of PM be shared between them for 2.5 years each.

- Team Anna must work closely with NCPRI and other civil society groups.

- Civil society must form an association to engage with state and central governments more effectively.

- I do not understand why congress is insisting BJP to support the bill when the amendments moved by BJP are rejected by them. Opposition cannot be the rubber stamp of the government.

- Perfection is elusive for those who want to escape from the challenge of excellence. The Lokpal bill passed by Loksabha is not fit for use. It needs amendments. People of India expect PM to intervene in the deadlock and invite Arun Jaitley and Abhishek Singhvi to his office to understand inadequacies of the bill as pointed out by the opposition more carefully. PM must lead the debate.

- People of India are not interested in the debate of article 852 vs 853. We want a strong Lokpal at centre and equally strong and uniform Lokayukta at states. It is the responsibility of law makers to decide how to achieve it.

- Drama at RajyaSabha could have been avoided if Chairperson stopped the debate after 8pm. All the debates after Arun Jaitlay and Abhishek Singhvi were repetition of what they already said. We failed to comprehend why Narayanaswamy was allowed to speak for 70 minutes at very late hours when his voice was cracking and no one could understand what he was talking about. Government should have tabled the Lokpal bill at least two weeks before the debate.

- Political establishment didn’t like Anna’s movement at all. They considered it to be intrusion to their sovereignty.

- Government’s approach to deal with civil society was thoroughly unprofessional.  Their objective was to take the steam out of Anna's movement step by step. They agreed to have a dialogue with team Anna, but showed little interest to the suggestions made by them.

- Government was successful in irritating team Anna to such an extent that Team Anna lost their negotiation skill and resorted to arm twisting. Over the period, a perception was built that Team Anna is inflexible, arrogant and believes in ‘My way or high way’ – a phrase which was repeatedly used by every congress spokespersons in every TV debate.

- Anna’s campaign against Congress in Hisar by election is proved to be wrong now. Anna is viewed as anti congress, pro BJP which is a big blow to his non political credentials.

BJP and Congress both should retrospect on the series of events that happened in connection with Lokpal bill. Next time before defending their party position on TV channels they should remember that India is 95th most corrupt nation in the world as per transparency international with corruption perception index as 3.1 out of 10.  So we need a strong Lokpal/Lokayukta that will improve CPI at least by 2 points per year in next 3 years.

Finally it is my personal view that corruption of group C and D government employees can be stopped overnight if 1,000 undercover agents track down corrupt employees with hidden camera for 30 days and make 10,000 arrests in a month all over India. Shekhar Suman exposed corruption of police and other departments in his famous Pol Khol TV serial for few years. Unfortunately no state governments took any action against those exposed officials. If there is a political will, eliminating corruption is not a difficult task.