A strangely false sense of victory has gripped all those supporting the Team Anna’s anti-corruption movement. “Now that the government has agreed to introduce the Jan Lokpal Bill for discussion in the parliament and Anna Hazare has ended his indefinite fast corruption will vanish” seems to be the sentiment. One wishes things were this simple. It is neither a victory nor a defeat for Team Anna but just one small step towards bringing about enduring systemic changes for better in the governance at all levels. And this is going to be a long drawn, tricky and testing exercise for the lawmakers. Worse, the successive governments’ track record in fighting corruption has not been exactly encouraging. As for the parliament, it was gradually getting transmogrified into a running farce and an enduring lie. Thanks to Anna Hazare’s movement it has been saved the ignominy.
Over a period of time various institutions have been insidiously subverted. Look at the manner in which the judiciary was bent to Indira Gandhi’s whims during the Emergency. The Constitution of India was treated with utter contempt. All those who, today, quote the “We the people…” preamble need to be reminded that if the various institutions and the persons manning them turn weak-willed it does not take an overweening, ambitious person in power to ride roughshod over the people of India and the Constitution. Coming back to the corruption issue, again it was Indira Gandhi who had – perhaps unwittingly – given it a fillip with her “global phenomenon” justification. Ever since then the contagion has been spreading throughout the body politic, enfeebling it insidiously. Subversion of various constitutional institutions became the logical next step.
Today things have come to such a pass that a child gets baptized by corruption in the womb itself. Let us not forget that a majority of Indians cannot afford the services of private hospitals and clinics; they have to depend upon the government hospitals. And, routinely, one comes across media reports of a poor woman delivering at a government hospital’s doorsteps, or right on the floor of its corridor – anywhere but the proper operation-theatre/delivery room – a luxury that only the financially better off can afford. After that all post-natal care depends upon how much one can shell out. The malaise of corruption only becomes acuter when a child has to be admitted to a school. Right from the Kindergarten stage money power decides the quality of education that one can provide to one’s progeny… One can go on with this litany. But suffice to say that anything connected with government comes with a price in the form of illegal gratification. One can only imagine the sort of personality such a child would have acquired during its journey to adulthood; what sort of value systems would have taken roots in the child’s psyche?
Therefore, it was a pleasant surprise when one found a huge number of India’s youth coming out spontaneously to provide unstinted support to Anna Hazare’s war on corruption. This is the right time to refurbish our institutions and cleanse them of the virus of corruption. This is also the time to build new ones to meet the aspirations of a productive segment of our compatriots that wants to get on with their jobs and professions in a corruption free socio-political environment. By passing a strong Jan Lokpal Bill the parliament would be laying the foundations for other constructive/reformist measures. For example, there is a bill – complete in all respects and pending since 1999 – that can be introduced simultaneously, which provides for confiscation of properties of those convicted of corruption. In fact a comprehensive fine tuning-cum-reconstruction of our various constitutional provisions needs to be gone through in order to strengthen various checks and balances. This should ensure restoration of the equations among the Executive, the Legislature and the Judiciary. Never again, as has been happening of late a bit too frequently, should the Supreme Court feel impelled to get so pro-active as to be appearing to perform Legislative as well as the Executive roles. At the same time the system should become governance oriented – which it had ceased to be for the past four decades and more.
In this respect it becomes essential that persons with impeccable integrity must head the various constitutional institutions. Of course this is easier said than done. Vested interests of variegated hues would like to perpetuate their respective holds on various such institutions as these, apart from being instruments of governance, are fonts of power; this perception – bequeathed to us by the British Raj, and built on the value systems nurtured during the Mughal regimes – needs to be changed comprehensively, and pronto. No government office or functionary should be projected as a “ruler”. They are appointed to serve “We the people” and not to lord over them. For this the prevailing culture in our judiciary, the civil services as well as polity in general should be wiped out and replaced with more people friendly, service oriented attitudes. For this, first and foremost, the environments at various training institutes – that churn out IAS, IPS and sundry other civil servants – need to be looked into. There is something distinctly colonial in the value systems of these institutes. And, “We the people” need such civil servants as share their worldview.
Indeed, the entire governmental edifice is crying for renovation. It will take strong political will, statesmanlike vision and unstinted support from the civil society to usher in a systemic change that would truly provide “We the people” a dignified life. Otherwise the preamble to India’s constitution will remain what it has been turned into – an ineffectual verbiage that has stopped inspiring the common man.
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