Monday, January 2, 2012

Lokpal Bill - All in the name of Federalism

Purely legalistic, technical reasons instead of moral or natural ones - This is what we can define the pandemonium we saw in the Parliament during the discussion of Lokpal Bill, the way Upper House behaved in the last day of her Winter Session. Especially the ballooned reasons like - attack on federalism, invading rights of states etc more looked like excuses than arguments.

I am not going to the merit or drawback of Lokpal. Even after these much debates I don't know how it will stop corruption; how it will protect a street vendor from paying money daily to the Police; I don't know how it will protect a person who is forced to use a low quality service from the state than he deserve; I don’t know how it will help in moving a file from one table to another; I don't know how it will help people who are buying mineral water from railway stations, bus stands, tourist places etc from paying amounts above the MRP (even the relatively simple consumer laws didn’t able to stop this)... I don't know many of these things.

Corruption is not specific to any region or state. It is a nationwide phenomenon, people can tell stories of corruption from different parts of India; the language may be different but the core will be same. If you want to prevent - I will not say prevent better word may be 'try to prevent' - corruption you need to have national level action plan, atleast national level framework. A framework which every state should implement - above that they can make more severe laws. If left this to the states then we it may take another decade to for all the states to pass these laws. As I mentioned in my previous article related to the discom crisis, even after coming in to force in 2003, there are stated which didn’t implemented the law yet.

One of the reasons for Anna Hazare's second fast failed to attract people may be their belief in government – as Parliament took the issue finally something will happen. This something may tied them to the indoors. So it is the duty of both government and the opposition to discuss the issues in parliament, people are not interested in a lengthy debate on federalism, not on whether the law should be under article 252 or 253 but an output. An output which will force the officials to think twice before forcing the common man to fill their pockets. This is what people expect form the lawmakers in the next parliamentary session.

Sajeev.

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