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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Make suggestions but don't impose solutions, Bhagwati tells civil society

Make suggestions but don't impose solutions, Bhagwati tells civil society

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published Published on Dec 23, 2011   modified Modified on Dec 23, 2011
-The Hindu
 
‘Had market-using reforms been used in auctioning spectrum, the scam would not have arisen”

Batting for removal of licence regime to tackle corruption, noted economist Jagdish N. Bhagwati on Thursday said the auction of 2G spectrum in 2008 would have averted the telecom scam. He lauded the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government for bringing out anti-corruption legislation and asked the civil society to make suggestions and not impose solutions.

“High-level corruption requires that the incidence of the license system be minimised… Interestingly, if the market-using reforms had been used in allocating the 2G spectrum by auctioning it off, the scandal would not have arisen,” Professor Bhagwati said while delivering the 24th Intelligence Bureau Endowment Lecture on ‘Designing Institutions for Governance Reform.'

On corruption in higher and lower bureaucracy, the Senior Fellow at the Columbia University pointed out the UPA government had responded in the last few weeks to both types of corruption by introducing a blitzkrieg of legislations — such as the protection of whistle blowers, the Lokpal Bill and the Judicial Accountability Bill — that are of the “adaptation” variety.

“They have been immediately questioned as weak and inadequate. But the real problem with this response is not its problematic efficacy. Rather it lies in the fact that these measures do not provide ‘mitigation' which would reduce the incentives for corruption,” he observed.

Referring to the anti-corruption campaign by social activist Anna Hazare and his followers, he said perhaps the greatest disappointment with the country's civil society activists was their presumption that they could supplant the democratic process.

“The UPA government has been exactly right: civil society can agitate. They are good at flagging an issue; they are not good at flogging. They are an important supplement to parliamentary democracy…but caveats must be added if it is to play a creative rather than a destructive role,” Professor Bhagwati noted.

“At minimum, they [civil society or NGOs] also need to learn the value of dialogue instead of diatribe. The Anna Hazare movement was startling in the way that the NGOs fell out, often with high decibel denunciations directed at their own kind, turning into uncivil society instead,” he added.

Lauds UPA for its anti-graft laws

Civil society can't supplant democratic process

The Hindu, 23 December, 2011, http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/article2740104.ece


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