The Hindu Business Line : Dilly-dallying over Lok Pal

Corruption will be out one day, however much one may try to conceal it; and the public can, as its right and duty, in every case of justifiable suspicion, call its servants to strict account, dismiss them, sue them in a law court or appoint an arbitrator or inspector to scrutinise their conduct, as it likes. – Mahatma Gandhi in Young India (1928)

Today politics has become corrupt. Anybody who goes into politics gets contaminated. The greater the inner purity, the greater shall be our hold on the people, without any effort on our part. – Mahatma Gandhi, prayer meeting, January 1948

Bringing the conduct of people’s representatives under the scanner and making them conform to stringent norms of probity and rectitude is not an easy job. The US, for all its democratic traditions, claims of open government and awareness and participation of citizens in public affairs, had been vacillating over an ethics and lobbying reform legislation and it was only on January 17 that the Senate there was able to pass a watered down version.

It was the culmination of prolonged negotiations among the lawmakers belonging to the Democratic and Republican parties with a view to effecting compromises aimed at softening some of the provisions. For instance, the idea of setting up an independent office to investigate the ethical breaches of members was to nobody’s liking and had to be dropped before the Bill came for voting.

The salient features of the Bill in its final form provide, among other things, for barring lawmakers from accepting gifts and travel and lodging paid for by lobbyists; extending from one to two years the time a former member must wait before he can engage in lobbying activities; denying pensions to lawmakers convicted of serious crimes; requiring full disclosure of all payments made or received and all activities likely to subject members to improper pressures; requiring reporting by lobbyists who obtain small donations from clients and then “bundle” them into larger contributions to politicians; and preventing spouses of sitting members from lobbying.

The enactment laying down the do’s and don’ts for MPs in the UK is also of a recent origin.

Unnatural death

India is an inexplicable paradox. Its heritage of 10,000 years, exemplified by the Vedas, Upanishads, the great epics and literature in every language going back to centuries, glorify honesty, integrity and purity in private and public conduct. And yet, corruption is so rampant that year after year, India figures in the top 20 countries in the ranking by the Transparency International for corruption!

For more than four decades, India’s parliamentarians have been dragging their feet over the implementation of the recommendation of the Santhanam Committee for Prevention of Corruption for establishing the institution of Lok Pal at the Centre to take action against corrupt practices by Ministers, including the Prime Minister, and MPs. The Lok Pal Bill, meant to give effect to this recommendation, had been introduced eight times in as many Lok Sabhas but put to an unnatural death with the end of the term of the House.

The Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, himself admitted, while addressing the Conference of Lokayuktas in September 2004, soon after the UPA Government came into power that “the need for Lok Pal is much more urgent at present than ever before” and promised to take effective action in this regard “without any further loss of time.” In fact, the quotations from Mahatma Gandhi are from his speech. There are no signs of the Lok Pal Bill becoming law this time also. How long do the Government and our parliamentarians think they can take people for a ride?

B. S. RAGHAVAN

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