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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Govt's reasonable Lokpal Bill

Govt's reasonable Lokpal Bill

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published Published on Dec 22, 2011   modified Modified on Dec 22, 2011
-The Economic Times
 
The government's version of the Lokpal Bill gets most things right. The entire executive, represented by its senior layers, including the Prime Minister, comes under its purview. The Central Bureau of Investigation, which deals with all kinds of crime and not just corruption, is rightly kept outside the proposed Lokpal's administrative control but will investigate cases referred to it by the Lokpal. Nor is there any attempt to create a schizophrenic split between the investigative and prosecuting wings of the CBI. The Lokpal Bill comes in conjunction with other Bills: a citizen's charter, a judicial accountability Bill, a Bill to protect whistleblowers, another to make it even more difficult to launder money, and yet another to protect our public servants from bribe-minded foreigners. All this is welcome. But some measures are still needed, to combat corruption effectively. We need a vastly expanded judicial system and its processes need to be streamlined to achieve a simple goal: no case would take longer than 18 months to be settled beyond final appeal. We need to make the CBI autonomous of the government even when it is not being monitored by the Supreme Court. And we need to reform political funding, to make it transparent and accountable. These remain to be tackled. 

Team Anna is not satisfied, predictably enough. It will continue its protests, as part of an organised campaign to use popular resentment against the venality of the neta-babu nexus against the Congress party and its leaders. Its arguments are ludicrous: if 75 lakh civil servants of groups C and D are to be brought under the Lokpal, the ombudsman would have to have a huge organisation, to maintain whose integrity we would need to create a super-Lokpal. The simple logic that if you mind the minders, those whom the minders mind will also automatically be minded is beyond Team Anna. Its conception of the Lokpal is that elite morality alone can protect the unwashed masses from self-inflicted damage arising from their futile attempts at self-governance. Its appeal to TV anchors with messianic delusions should not cow responsible politicians into abdication of democracy.

The Economic Times, 22 December, 2011, http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/opinion/govts-reasonable-lokpal-bill/articleshow/11201281.cms


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