It has been almost a month since the nation witnessed the so called “drama” involving the high profile Yoga Guru Baba Ramdev and the government of India. This incidence was followed by ameliorated acridness in all the remarks and comments issued by the government of India over the issue. Even the Lokpal Committee was not spared from its wrath and the so called ‘Team Anna’ was virtually threatened by people at prestigious positions. A few statements came from the HRD ministry that clearly reflected the attitude of the government towards common people and corruption.
It was said that the Parliament of India was above the members of the civil society and nowhere in the world is any civil society member ever connected with the drafting of a bill. It was also said that the powers given to a Lokpal, according to Anna’s draft, were such that it would be almost like running a parallel government. Much more was said, but we will focus on these two points for now.
As far as the first point is concerned, maybe it has never happened that any member of civil society has been a part of any bill drafting committee. But then why does India always have to follow some other country. Are we so lame that we can not take a decision of our own or is it the slavery of more than 200 years that makes our nerves shake before we take a decision. There is no answer to why a civil society activist can not be included in the panel as long as the bill was his own idea. He has more insight on what needs to be a part of the bill and how the bill can be prevented from any loopholes. The only reason for not including him in the panel as “it has not happened before” is not acceptable. Mahatma Gandhi was not a Member of Parliament but during the drafting of the constitution he was almost always consulted. But alas! There was no Kapil Sibbal to condemn that at that time.
As far as parallel governance is concerned, I am not sure why that should be a problem at all. If we think of it with a different point of view, we are actually under the governance of two different governments even as I speak. In fact, it is a result of fusion of two types of systems into one: the Parliamentary system and the Presidency system. Hence we are ruled by two state heads viz. the President and the Prime Minister. And the present scenario says that we have someone above The Prime Minister, better known as the madamji. And above all, is the almighty US which interferes in almost all the decisions taken by India. And of course the governance by the God can not be neglected. :P
So how the addition of one more governing body to our nation becomes a problem is still not understandable. In fact a parallel government looks like a good idea to me. Since the present government has failed in delivering results on many issues, it may be concluded that there is a lot of work to be done and the present coalition government is not capable enough to handle so many activities at one time. So, all the issues or the work that is supposed to be done by the government can be classified into two. The first part may contain all the regular work that a government is supposed to do. The second part may contain the issues that can not be solved in one term of government such as corruption, unemployment, black money etc. The second set of job should be handed to the Lokpal, independent of any influence, and answerable only to the Supreme Court. So this would be like two parallel governing authorities inspecting one another. And not only at the center, should the Lokpal have influence even on the grassroots level. It is by the eradication of small weeds that we clean the garden.
Just one question Mr. Sibbal. The Lokpal will not be an elected body. So how can it be compared to the parliament or the government at all? The basic requirement of a democratic government is that it should be elected and that is not the case for Lokpal. In fact the Lokpal is an independent investigating body and should be looked in line with CBI, the only difference being it won’t be answerable to the government.
Although the initiative has been taken, the attitude of the government shows that it will do its best to avoid any strict rule like the Lokpal that will hamper the achieving of their ultimate goal.
