Courtesy Ashok.R Mundhada - telling comment.............................................Ayn Rand has taken a dig at law-happy people of the society in her magnum opus “Atlas Shrugged”. “There ought to be a law against this, there ought to be a law against that!” And so it goes on. Onus on enacting laws rather than implementing & obeying them. We already had enough laws to deal with corruption. There is the Police, the Anti-corruption bureau, Central Vigilance Commission, the court of law & the watch dog i.e. the fourth estate. The problem is enforcement & not lack of laws. But we all know that our police are not only corrupt but insensitive. The anti-corruption bureau is most corrupt & caste ridden. Lately there are accusations against the high court judges. And the fourth estate is not only corrupt but irresponsible. I have witnessed it with my own eyes, how a senior, non-corrupt journalist was hounded out of the system in Amravati. Everyone remembers him as a good but impractical journalist. So where will you find a non-corrupt LOKPAL? And who is electing these so called corrupt politicians?! WE!! Lokpal (Ombudsman) is a concept given to the world by the Scandinavian countries long back. But the concept caught fancy only after the Second World War. Lokpal might have entered our jargon 40 years back but till 4 years back 99% people had neither heard about it, nor discussed about it or cared about it. Across the globe, Ombudsman has already become stale as an effective institution against corruption especially in big countries where management becomes a problem. We already have enough laws to deal with corruption. The problem is of enforcement & not lack of laws. The modern thinking is one of creating & nurturing law abiding societies rather than enacting more & more laws & law enforcing institutions. Corruption was no less in erstwhile communist societies that operated behind the curtains with an iron hand & draconian laws. A society doesnt become honest by enacting laws. It becomes honest by obeying laws, by showing character. People are pretending as if only Congress is corrupt or only the politicians (of all parties) are corrupt. That is false. Our Doctors, our Lawyers, our Teachers/Professors, our lower level judiciary, our armed forces & our NGOs are equally corrupt, not to mention our Police, our Bureaucracy & our Businessmen who are already known for this. As if a fresh set of Indians will descend from heaven in a Pushpak viman to run this proposed new miracle institution. And please do not tell me about the proposed checks in the draft Lokpal as such checks & counter-checks exist in theory in existing frame-work as well. If at all, this clamour should have been for more transparency, more competition, more accountability & MORE USE OF TECHNOLOGY. This is how the developed world is dealing with corruption: through e-governance! “No great man can be trusted with powers that would enable him to subvert the institutions”. This is precisely what IAC & Team Anna were trying to do. To bestow unimaginable powers to an appointed authority/institution in the name of eradicating corruption. What is the difference between an autocracy & a democracy? A dictator is Legislature, Executive & Judiciary, all three rolled in to one. The fourth pillar i.e. the Press is almost non-existent. In a democracy, these three powers CAN’T be vested with one person/institution & the fourth estate carries a lot of clout. The draconian Jan-Lokpal (of Team Anna) was trying to vest all three powers with one person/institution. It was a clever attempt to enact a parallel, unelected autocracy. We live in a country where more laws lead to more human interface (between the authorities & the people) & hence more corruption. We can lessen corruption only through e-governance (i.e. by reducing the human interaction). UPA government took the first major step towards implementing e-governance. As of now, only Delhi, Maharashtra & Gujarat fell in line where as other states are lagging behind in implementing e-governance. In Maharashtra, e-governance has reached the R.T.O., Land Record & Registry department, Payment of state level levies & taxes, Universities & educational institutions etc. At present, there are teething troubles. Competitive e-tendering process has been initiated in PWD & Irrigation but in the absence of global competition, contractors have formed cartels even there.
Posted on: Sat, 05 Apr 2014 17:37:29 +0000
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