Anna Hazare's fast puts Jan Lokpal on the nation's agenda, but doubts remain whether it will help root out corruption. A FUTURE historian who browses the archives of Indian newspapers and news websites from April 5 to 10 will be confused over how to characterise the groundswell of public support across the country for the “fast unto death” undertaken at Jantar Mantar, in New Delhi, by a social activist not...
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Aruna Roy, MKSS activist and member of the NAC interviewed by Ajoy Ashirwad Mahaprashasta
WHILE maintaining her support for a Lokpal institution, Aruna Roy, a prominent civil rights activist and a member of the National Advisory Council, took a critical position in respect of the Jan Lokpal Bill drafted by the activists of the India Against Corruption campaign. A recipient of the Ramon Magsaysay Award for community leadership in 2000, she heads the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (a trade union of workers and peasants)...
More »Inadequate systems by V Venkatesan and Purnima Tripathi
THE Jan Lokpal Bill fills the vacuum in the fight against corruption, at least in a theoretical sense. The existing systems of identifying and prosecuting cases of corruption against public officials are woefully inadequate. At present, public servants can be prosecuted for corruption under the Indian Penal Code and the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988. However, the investigating agency, such as the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), has to get...
More »Law ministry proposes 20-yr term for babus as part of governance reforms
The law ministry has prepared a 10-point governance reforms agenda which envisages capping a bureaucrat's term to 20 years and seeks reforms in allocation of mining and land rights. The presentation made to key UPA functionaries, including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress President Sonia Gandhi , says all new recruitments to central government jobs should be for 20 years and any extension beyond that would depend on the outcome of...
More »Bribes: a small but radical idea by P Sainath
To ask a people burdened with systemic bribery to accept bribe-giving as legal is to demand they accept corruption and the existing structures of power and inequity it flows from. Let's get this right. The Chief Economic Adviser to the Ministry of Finance, Government of India, wants a certain class of bribes legalised? And says so in a paper titled “Why, for a Class of Bribes, the Act of Giving a...
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