The Jan LokPal – a panacea for all ills?

Take a look at some important diary of events till now
• A series of government scams all running into multi billion dollars, and some of them might even be the GDP of small countries like Bhutan!
• Months long public protests by citizens of some WANA (West Asia North Africa) region countries against despotic regimes there.
• A scintillating world cup victory for India after a generational gap of 28 years, which left the urban middle class public mood very ecstatic and, patriotic too, with shouts of Vande mataram and Bharat mata ki jai!

And enter Shri Anna Hazare with his coterie of activists, with their demand for Jan Lokpal! A brilliant timing! What more can the media and urban middle class ask for? After four days of fast, the weak central government blinked to the pressure tactics applied by the so called “non governmental organization”. Within no time the gang of activists became the darling of the media.

Shri Anna Hazare jee exhorted people “Jail Bharo!” as if we were living under British Raj! And youth also got a feeling of having-done-their-bit for the country by tweeting, sending sms, taking online polls. When was the last time when the youth of the present generation came in numbers for protest? Yes it was by again some “non governmental organization” named Youth for equality who protested on streets against the OBC reservation introduced in the central educational institutes. Did they come on streets when Dalits were deprived off their self-respect? Did they come forward for the womans reservation which is also lying like the lokpal bill in sarkari files? They only come forward when it affects them! They would ring up the fire brigade only when their house is burning. And this act they call as patriotism!

It is no one's case that there should not be strong anti -corruption laws in the country. But the ways and means taken up by the activists were really very coercive and undemocratic in nature. Can the various governmental problems be solved in such ways? Would the government blink tomorrow, when some XYZ NGO comes up and fasts until death unless the Kashmir issue is sorted out in 72 hours? Can such ultimatums be given to the democratically elected governments?

And needless to say all those youth who were gungho, to come on to the media and pledge their support, might not even have taken a look at the proposals made by “jan” Lokpal Bill. The bill straight away jettisons the tried and tested method of “checks and balances” incorporated in the various arms of the democratic set up, by the Indian constitution. It tries to create a draconian authority who can summon any one; suo mottu initiate actions investigate and even play the role of courts! A kind of super cop, super judiciary and a parallel government of sorts!

Moreover the laws of any democratic country are usually made by the legislators who are the “true” representatives of people, how-much-ever corrupt they be! It is a fact. This should be the first time in India where a non-elected body will be part of drafting a law, which is a DANGEROUS precedent. How do one filter out a civil society organization? Whom do they represent? Can they speak for whole of India?

Then the question comes what should be done for stopping the rampant corruption? Should we just sit and watch? Yes there cannot be an instant-ready-to-work solution like so many other lacunae present in democratic set up. A beginning to all this should be to get down to the roots.

Roots being the electoral reforms like
• make the intra party elections mandatory so that dynasty politics is done away with
• Stop the entry of goons in the main stream politics
• Curb the flow of ill-gotten money during elections; Make it mandatory to publish the income expenditure records for all the people who contest elections.

All this needs to be done so that entering main stream politics does not remain a privilege of few wealthy people with good “connections”. And when such a thing happens then no one needs to fast till death to bring about legislations needed.

Of course all these are from a layman’s perspective. There would be technical difficulties in this too.

Also one should not forget that it was Gandhiji who said, after attaining independence, fasts should not be used against the government, as there would be ample democratic means and ways to seek redressal to public grievances. Same were the views of Dr.BabaSaheb Ambedkar the architect of Indian constitution.

Birthday suits and world cup

Cup mania! Nudity and the world cup: All the nudity that we have seen in world cups is of Dada appearing top less ( should we term it as nudity?). Now in news was a girl who was ready to strip if India lifts the world cup. And guess what? To add spice to the already “hot” cup some local parties have protested, saying govt should take action against her! And the icing on the cake comes from PETA, which says “Strip for animals, not for cricketers!”. Wonder called India! Someone wants to shed her clothes and we have political parties crying that government should leave all its work and go after that silly girl. I was wondering, what if government obliges? Well if the government obliges, then in typical sarkari style it will have to first set up a committee something like Naagdu committee ( pun intended to rhyme with Shunglu committee), which will have nominated members like Rakhi Sawant, Mallika Sherawat, Madhu Sapre heading it! N.B: In such news TOI does a commendable job. Those days wont be far away when TOI will be aquired by Gossip and Glamour magazines of west, Or is it already done clandestinely?)