Over the last one week, something dramatic happened all over India. Anna Hazare and few others (very important people whom we tend to forget) came together and got government to agree on considering a version of Lokpal Bill (called Jan Lokpal Bill) with participation from "civilians" in the draft committee. This has two big implications:
1. Is this the beginning of death of democratic process of people electing legislators to draft laws? As the process which Anna Hazare took seems to something which is more suited to Dictatorships and not Democracies.
2. The debate on concentration of power in Lokpal at Central and Lokayukta's at State level as they act as initiators of investigation, investigators and judges in all the cases. This is contrary to democratic principles of having checks and balances. The argument of having eminent citizens such as Bharat Ratna Awardees, Magsaysay Award winners and others with similar profiles as part of this independent constitutional authority to be created transfers the risk of choosing right people from one committee to another. It does not eliminate it.
Having said the above, I must make it clear that I am not at all against creating of Lokpal and Lokayukta's in India. I am just reflecting on some challenges which we will all face over next few weeks while debating this important peace of legislation.
However, I do want to comment on another aspect of corruption in India. At its core, having corruption free India is about having probity in our lives. Can we all say that we all are doing our bit to be honest? How many of us are fine with not having an accurate representation of what we are while applying for jobs in the application? How many of us use pirated music for listening or pirated software on our computers? This list of questions goes on. At the end of it, while we all want and we must continue to do so in seeking Corruption free society, the larger challenge we all face is bring honesty in our lives. Unless we do so, I believe our attempts would meet limited success as far as eradicating corruption is concerned.
Talking to few people around me, I realize that we want a corruption free society as as its about getting our politicians acts right as they seem to be minting money. On doing a bit of deep dive, I realize that all of us want to hold others accountable and demand honesty from them. When it comes to ourselves we tend to move away from this question. This brings me to a phenomena we all seem to cherish in our subconscious minds "Hypocrisy". We all have a different set of rules for ourselves and those for others when it comes to "Honesty". The reason Anna Hazare could do what he did was because he has been a honest person in the true sense all his life and as a consequence he could make his choice between "Honesty" and "Hypocrisy".
I wonder how many of us will be able to solve this HHH conundrum of Hazare, Honesty and Hypocrisy........
1. Is this the beginning of death of democratic process of people electing legislators to draft laws? As the process which Anna Hazare took seems to something which is more suited to Dictatorships and not Democracies.
2. The debate on concentration of power in Lokpal at Central and Lokayukta's at State level as they act as initiators of investigation, investigators and judges in all the cases. This is contrary to democratic principles of having checks and balances. The argument of having eminent citizens such as Bharat Ratna Awardees, Magsaysay Award winners and others with similar profiles as part of this independent constitutional authority to be created transfers the risk of choosing right people from one committee to another. It does not eliminate it.
Having said the above, I must make it clear that I am not at all against creating of Lokpal and Lokayukta's in India. I am just reflecting on some challenges which we will all face over next few weeks while debating this important peace of legislation.
However, I do want to comment on another aspect of corruption in India. At its core, having corruption free India is about having probity in our lives. Can we all say that we all are doing our bit to be honest? How many of us are fine with not having an accurate representation of what we are while applying for jobs in the application? How many of us use pirated music for listening or pirated software on our computers? This list of questions goes on. At the end of it, while we all want and we must continue to do so in seeking Corruption free society, the larger challenge we all face is bring honesty in our lives. Unless we do so, I believe our attempts would meet limited success as far as eradicating corruption is concerned.
Talking to few people around me, I realize that we want a corruption free society as as its about getting our politicians acts right as they seem to be minting money. On doing a bit of deep dive, I realize that all of us want to hold others accountable and demand honesty from them. When it comes to ourselves we tend to move away from this question. This brings me to a phenomena we all seem to cherish in our subconscious minds "Hypocrisy". We all have a different set of rules for ourselves and those for others when it comes to "Honesty". The reason Anna Hazare could do what he did was because he has been a honest person in the true sense all his life and as a consequence he could make his choice between "Honesty" and "Hypocrisy".
I wonder how many of us will be able to solve this HHH conundrum of Hazare, Honesty and Hypocrisy........
