Lessons from the Lokpal fiasco
By Praful Bidwai
The fiasco over the Lokpal Bill, ending with the government’s midnight retreat in the Rajya Sabha, showed both the United Progressive Alliance and the Bharatiya Janata Party and their backers in poor light, and exposed the hypocrisy of and growing lack of public support for self-styled Gandhian Anna Hazare and the India Against Corruption (IAC) campaign.
The episode highlights a massive governance failure and the Indian polity’s reluctance to summon up the will to fight the scourge of corruption in high places by establishing a Lokpal or ombudsman who is independent of the executive and has investigating powers. Two critical issues still remain unresolved: the Lokpal’s appointment by a committee not dominated by the government, and its authority over the Central Bureau of Investigation or another probe agency.
Contrary to Team Anna, the Lokpal cannot be a panacea against corruption, especially of the kind experienced by the poor who have to bribe petty officials to get even the services they are entitled to. We need a different law for that, as Aruna Roy’s National Campaign for the People’s Right to Information thoughtfully proposes. But a Lokpal is nevertheless indispensable for investigating corruption charges involving high state functionaries.
This writer, for one, will shed no tears over the acute embarrassment that Anna Hazare and IAC suffered when they failed to attract big crowds. It was sheer hubris which drove them to announce a three-day fast by Hazare, to be followed by a mass arrest campaign.
They didn’t see the moral absurdity of a three-day, as distinct from an indefinite, fast. Nor did they understand that public support for the Ramlila Maidan event in August was based on unresolved tensions between IAC and the government which had not then clarified its stand on the Lokpal Bill.
However, once the issue went to Parliamentary forums, including Standing Committees, and the Houses, the public didn’t see coercive interference with the process as legitimate.
In August, Team Anna got a boost because of the UPA’s appalling mishandling of his protest, hyped by a fawning media. That didn’t happen last week. Meanwhile, important members of the Team got exposed for their shady deals and dubious practices. They were seen as super-ambitious and venal—and not even above petty party politics, especially after Hazare announced that he would campaign against the Congress in the coming elections to five state Assemblies.
Team Anna’s links with the sangh parivar, which lent IAC crucial logistical and other support at an early stage, brought it no credit. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh leadership, including chief Mohan Bhagwat, openly identified themselves with and endorsed Hazare. They admitted that large numbers of swayamsevaks were present and active in Ramlila Maidan. That, and the cosy relationship in evidence with the BJP, didn’t enhance Team Anna’s stature.
Nor did the change of venue to Mumbai, which had less to do with the weather in Delhi than with Anna’s reported ease with the “non-confrontationist” approach Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan signalled when consulted in August over an emergency plan to “airlift” Anna to Maharashtra. Meanwhile, the Bombay High Court reminded Anna that he cannot claim to represent the Indian people or demand privileged free access to public grounds.
However, the UPA or the Congress didn’t cover itself with glory either. Having first drafted a Lokpal Bill which kept the CBI under the Centre’s control but allowed the Lokpal an independent anti-corruption investigation agency, it switched to a new formula after the Parliamentary Standing Committee delivered a fractured report, with many dissenting notes.
Under the final Bill, there would be no autonomous investigating agency under the Lokpal, who would have to rely on government-controlled bodies to investigate corruption.
Now, there is a good case for keeping the CBI out of the Lokpal’s total control. That, as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh argued, would effectively make the Bureau unaccountable to Parliament. But there’s an even more compelling case for freeing the CBI of the government’s day-to-day control so that the Lokpal can order the Bureau to probe serious cases of corruption. Dr Singh disingenuously ducked this issue.
Freeing the CBI must start with repealing the “Single Directive” of the 1980s under which the Bureau cannot conduct even a preliminary enquiry against a Joint Secretary-level or higher-rank civil servant or a minister without the government’s permission. And no government, whether led by the Congress or the BJP, has been willing to grant permission.
So the final Bill creates a toothless Lokpal without independent investigative powers, to be appointed or dismissed by a five-member committee, of whom three would be named by the government. This makes for an anaemic and powerless institution in place of the effective and credible one that’s needed.
To confuse matters further, the UPA also created positions for under-represented categories, including Dalits, OBCs, Muslims, etc. in the multi-member Lokpal. Although this wasn’t quite reservation, it neutralised the centrist opposition and isolated the BJP.
The UPA exploited to the hilt suspicion of the very institution of the Lokpal prevalent among certain vocal politicians like the Rashtriya Janata Dal’s Lalu Prasad. Some of them walked out, enabling the Bill’s passage in the Lower House.
Contrary to its stated position, the BJP voted against the Lokpal and Lokayuktas Bill in a spectacular show of double standards. It did so, it said, because the Bill “unconstitutionally” introduced reservations for religious minorities, which it didn’t. The BJP voted against the sister Bill which would make the Lokpal a Constitutional authority. That’s because it opposed the original!
The “party with a difference” was has been hard put to deny that it played sordid politics with the Bill, arguing contradictorily in the Rajya Sabha that by mandating the Lokayuktas’ appointment in the states, it violates the principle of federalism. But it supported the same clause in the Lok Sabha!
In doing this, the BJP was only trying to exploit the Congress’s differences with its hard-to-placate and unpredictably volatile ally, Ms Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress, and add to the confusion caused by the 187 amendments moved to the Bill in the Rajya Sabha by the opposition.
In the end, the UPA turned tail and didn’t press for a vote on the Bill, which it would have lost given the numbers. The UPA would have sounded credible had it argued that it at least preserved the Bill for a vote on another day, rather than have the amendments “mutilate” it. But the grounds it cited—namely, the convention that the Rajya Sabha cannot sit beyond midnight of its session’s last day, and its New Year’s session must begin with an address by the President—was specious.
There is no such convention. For instance, in 2003-04, the House was adjourned on December 23 and reconvened on January 29. The Supreme Court ruled that this was not a new session, but only a resumption of its earlier sitting. The world over, conferences decide to extend their sittings if they haven’t completed their business as planned.
However, it’s not the UPA or Congress, but the BJP, which emerged most discredited from the whole affair. It played a double game right from the beginning by using Anna as a semi-respectable mascot or symbol for the Sangh parivar’s age-old agenda of trying to seize power by devious means, because it cannot win it through the ballot box.
The BJP has never had a commitment to the Lokpal/Lokayukta. In Gujarat, the post has been lying vacant for almost 10 years, but Chief Minister Narendra Modi wants veto power over the nominee recommended by the Chief Justice Uttarakhand’s new Lokayukta Act demands the concurrence of “all” Lokayukta members before a complaint against the Chief Minister can be processed. However, at the Centre, the BJP objected to the Bill providing for concurrence of three-fourths of the Lokpal members before investigating a complaint against the Prime Minister.
The BJP opposed the Bill in the Lok Sabha because it wants to deny the Congress any credit for the Lokpal, and thus help strengthen the Anna campaign which might help it in the coming elections, especially in Uttar Pradesh. This marks low political cynicism.
Team Anna in turn revealed its close connections with the BJP by concentrating all its attacks on Congress leaders, including Dr Singh and Rahul Gandhi, while saying nothing against the BJP for its countless vacillations on the Lokpal Bill since April, and eventually for scuttling it.
It’s of no mean significance that the Team didn’t once criticise the Trinamool Congress for moving the “federalist” amendment to keep the Lokayukta out of the Bill, or the BJP for backing it—although the Lokayukta’s inclusion was one of Hazare’s “non-negotiable” demands.
Team Anna is now looking confused and directionless, and is publicly pleading for help with ideas and strategies. Anna Hazare uniquely combines personal honesty and austerity with authoritarianism, rusticity, ignorance, messianic arrogance, mulish obstinacy, and low cunning. His discrediting, and the exposure of his links with the parivar, is the sole gain from the drama. It must not be lost. (IPA Service)