Chennai:
Any struggle against
corruption will not succeed as long as people remain ignorant, illiterate,
starving and unemployed and the Jan Lokpal of Anna Hazare has failed to look
into these issues, according to H Suresh, former judge of Mumbai high Court.
Speaking during the
Consultation on “Do We Need a Lokpal or Strengthen Existing Anti – Corruption,
Accountability and Grievance Redress Mechanisms and Laws’ here, Suresh said the
country has numerous provisions and institutions to tackle poverty but yet with
all these, corruption has not abated, instead it has assumed gigantic
proportions like the now pending 2G License cases.
“What we require is not
a new institution like the Lokpal. What we have to do is strengthen the
existing agencies and institutions. We cannot hope to create a super body on
the assumption that all the existing institutions have failed, irretrievably,
while there still exist avenues to make them strong and meaningful. No struggle
against corruption will succeed as long as people remain ignorant, illiterate,
starving and unemployed,” the former high court judge said.
The need of the hour is to
empower the toiling people with the right to housing education and health care.
If people are ill-educated, ill-informed and are physically, mentally
ill-equipped, which Lokpal will ensure and secure them these rights, he questioned.
Suresh said the Lokpal
conceived by the UPA Government or the Jan Lokpal as canvassed by the Anna
Hazare team, provides no answer to any of these questions.
Nikhil Dey, Co-Convenor, National Campaign for
People’s Right to Information and founder
member, Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS) said the structure and
procedure of the Jan Lokpal Bill will create a very powerful police and head
towards becoming a police State. “Even if we assume all of it works to
perfection, what it will essentially do is triple our police stations from
13,500 to 40,000,” he said.
Dey stressed the need to
rationalise existing infrastructure and manpower into one single platform or
window. “This will be free of any department; it will just take a citizen’s
application or complaint, register it, and give dated receipt, then track the
movement of the complaint. Any citizen can then track the fate of their
grievance over the phone or online through this office,” he said.
“One
massive lesson the Lokpal has missed, which the RTI taught us, is you don’t
need to create a new bureaucracy. Just use the existing structure and put an
oversight mechanism over it,” said Dey.
The abuse of administrative interest to keep file secret but issue the order publicly without revealing the file and the basis is the root cause of our ills. This is the fountain head of corruption. Corrupt rush to get power to issue orders against public interest benefit friends, and encash and have enough time to flee. Then they use the power of money to manipulate press and paly with judicial system. To solve the problem what we need is to make govt publish order with file. In real time we can then prevent conversion of such arbitrary orders in to cash through court, because the file is available.
ReplyDeleteBut instead of talking about this real fountain head of corruption, we are told all sorts of remedies which will never help.
So long as corrupt occupy positions of power, because it pays, we have no hope. Make the positions of power useless to make money, by forcing publication of file with order. You will see the difference. Corrupt will not come to government. Polls get cleansed. Only those interested in public service will then come to government.
WHy people do not understand this solution but try all other wrong ones of strengthening police, pass more ACts, but leave the corrupt as heads to execute, which means they will not execute.