part0022

Within a year of my retirement from the post of Cabinet Secretary, I moved to my own apartment in NOIDA. Those were the days when the mobile phone was not yet ubiquitous; I had a landline operated by BSNL, which had STD facility (domestic trunk-call facility). I had to get an International Subscriber Dialling (ISD) facility. I called the local telephone company office, somebody promptly came and spoke to me politely and got the application filled up along with the deposit required. Even though I waited for a week or ten days, the facility did not come through. When I called, somebody again turned up and said that I had not completed ‘all’ the formalities. I discovered that I was expected to pay a ‘facilitation’ charge, ‘under the table’. I was told that the amount was one

(one ‘box’). Curious as I was to know what that meant, it turned out to be

10,000 in this context. I had been Cabinet Secretary to the Government of India; I had the option of calling the Telecom Secretary in the Government of India and requesting him to do the needful—in Indian conditions that may have been the prescribed course of action. However, in the circumstances, I felt it was prudent to pay the ‘box’ and close the chapter. In the event, the son of the telephone inspector was the courier who came to ‘collect’ the box. My need was great, my son was settling down in the US, and my first grandson had been born, and I had need for regular dialling facility to the US. There is no doubt that I would have got the connection fixed by ‘pulling strings’, that is, talking to higher authorities, and using ‘influence’; which again could be seen as an unethical practice. However, if I had followed this route, I am sure that I would have had continuing operational problems with the phone connection, with regular ‘break-downs’ and great inconvenience.

Much later, one day I discovered a new bill showing arrears of

38,000 for my electricity meter, delivered at my door-step, which included a number of items, including non-fixation of various equipment etc. I took the phone and spoke to the Power Secretary in Lucknow and within a day an inspector turned up at my residence, ‘verified’ the facts, and the next day gave me a ‘revised’ bill of

11,000. This I paid and closed the matter. How many people in NOIDA have the ability to pick up the phone and speak to the Chief Secretary or the Power Secretary or the Industry Secretary or the Income-tax Commissioner or any of those authorities who wield power? My problem was sorted out in a day but imagine how long it would take an ordinary citizen to sort out this kind of a matter? Probably not too long as he would straightaway call the inspector, ‘settle’ the matter and go about his other activities. Long ago, sometime in the 1970s, I was in the residence of the then Power Secretary in Lucknow at a party, when the power supply broke down. The Power Secretary promptly called the Chairman, Electricity Board, and peremptorily ordered him to set the matter right—power was restored within 10 minutes. How many people in Uttar Pradesh can call the Chairman of the Board, when they don’t get power? In Kanpur, Lucknow, Varanasi—the largest towns in Uttar Pradesh—there is a daily power cut of 10 hours. Can the residents there call the Board’s Chairman or Power Secretary to restore power? In rural districts in Uttar Pradesh and in many other states, power is available only for 3–4 hours a day. Can an agriculturist call the chief minister or power minister on the phone, and peremptorily ask for immediate ‘restoration’ of power? Apparently all systems in India are available only to those who are influential—the others can like it or lump it—they do lump it !

A significant ethical question is involved—is the bribe giver and the bribe-taker equally culpable? Conventional wisdom is that it takes two hands to clap—there will be no bribe taken, if none is given. All of this is true but in practice can one treat the bribe-giver on the same footing as the bribe-taker? There can be no moral, ethical or legal way to condone the actions of the bribe-giver. But does the world consist entirely of bribe-givers and bribe-takers? Is there no role for governance, administration, a sanitized atmosphere for pre-empting bribes or providing an effective, swift, punitive retribution to bribe-takers and givers alike? Imagine the plight of a truck driver who has obtained a job in the Middle East, wanting in a hurry his International driving licence, or a passport as the case may be, without which his major career opportunity will go away. Imagine a student desperately wanting to stay in a particular town for higher education, which he cannot do unless he pays a ‘capitation’ fee for college entry, without which his whole career can be preemptively blighted. Imagine a philanthropist wanting to establish a high quality charity-oriented school or college or hospital, who has to obtain land for the same, which can be done only through a hefty bribe. Are these people committing crimes by paying bribes to get their legitimate objectives achieved? Can they be equated, on the same footing, with persons who demanded and received the illegal gratification? What they have done is clearly unethical and surely illegal, but are there credible extenuating circumstances? Can an outsider, who does not stand in the shoes of these people take the ‘holier-than-thou’ position that the bribe-giver is as much to blame, that circumstances are not relevant?

In the late 1960s, my father died in Chennai (then called Madras). He had spent most of his working life in Calcutta, and his income-tax returns were filed in the Calcutta circle. I had joined the IAS a few years earlier, and was posted as the District Magistrate in a district in east Uttar Pradesh. It fell on me to obtain ‘probate’ of his will in the Calcutta high court, complete the wealth tax/estate duty formalities in the income-tax office circle headquarters in Calcutta. As it happened, an income-tax commissioner, wife of a good friend of my late father was in that same office. The audit and finance chief of the company where my father worked in Calcutta also had enormous goodwill for him. All the paper work could be done very quickly. However, despite four or five visits, I could not get the final estate duty clearance and other relevant clearances, much as I tried repeatedly. Finally the income-tax commissioner, a personal well-wisher, advised me to be ‘practical’, and asked me to meet the supervisor of the estate duty department, so that the matter could be ‘closed’. In the interim period of three or four months I had already made four or five trips between Ghazipur, Calcutta and Madras(the last to refer to the papers and produce ‘clarifications’ and ‘copies’—all for the n-th time). She told me that this process could continue for the next few years, till I settled the matter with the office superintendent. These were the circumstances in which I paid a bribe of

50,000, to get the final release papers and clearances from the department. Clearly I had violated the law. What I had done was immoral, unethical, a senior officer of the administrative system in India had stooped to the level of violating an elementary law, but what was my option? Is it always the individuals who are to blame for violating the law? Should no responsibility be taken by the system for not creating conditions conducive to expeditious disposal of a citizen’s requirements in a proper legitimate honourable manner? How can the system not correct itself but create conditions conducive for massive corruption, and yet blame the bribe-giver as much as the bribe-taker for violation of the law? In my case, every person in the income-tax/wealth tax/estate duty office in Calcutta, from the junior most Class IV employee to the Chief Commissioner, certainly the chairman of the Board and the finance minister, knew exactly what was happening—that no assessee can get his assessment completed without illegal gratification—and yet is it fair to blame each assessee for violating the law in the circumstances? This situation can be multiplied a million times in India, in every single office of the central and state governments, every block, thana and district office, every place where land is registered, licenses given, every point of interaction between a citizen and the state. Every citizen is liable to stand convicted of violation of the law. I cannot think of any businessman who can survive without bribing the electricity, telephone, excise, sales tax, income-tax or any other authority. Each one is a culprit; the bigger the businessman, the larger the crime. The biggest business magnates in India are the biggest criminals—but hold your thought for a moment—do not convict them, before you convict every prime minister, every chief minister, every finance minister and every parliamentarian and every senior official of the central and state governments. Their crimes, which are often more of omission than of commission, are even larger than those of our businessmen and our citizens. The prime responsibility for making us a nation of criminals will vest with our political class not just for looting the country themselves, which is substantially true, but more for not doing enough to root out corruption at the points of government interaction.

Gunnar Myrdal, in his ‘Asian drama’ thesis of the 1960s prophesied that ‘democracy cannot rein in corruption in India’, as Asia is too ‘culturally different’. His prognosis about India has turned out to be valid, even though his overall thesis of the inherent instability of Indian democracy has not been proved right, at least as yet! Whereas India is now ranked at a lowly 87 in the International Transparency Index, Hong Kong (13), Korea (39), UAE, Taiwan and Bhutan are all estimated to be much less corrupt than India. Thailand, China and Malaysia are ranked well above India, as are Brazil, South Africa etc. Clearly the problem is not so much cultural or even an issue relating to ‘democracy’ (Asian or Indian style), it is really India’s failure to take appropriate structural, pre-emptive, corrective and punitive action. The Santanam Committee, as early as in the 1960s, had identified the main strands in the Indian corruption scene and had prescribed remedial measures. It is not a coincidence that nearly every major corrective proposed by Santanam has not been implemented till now. The Lok Pal or its equivalent, which was prescribed by Santanam in early 1960s is still not a reality 50 years later. Even after Anna Hazare’s movement and other similar outpourings of recent anger, there is no clarity when this will happen. Left to our politicians, we may have to wait another 50 years or more.

I recall that decades back when I was working in the Leather Export Promotion Council, a brilliant man called Nagappan (who had studied only up to Class V), was the Chairman of the Council. He was a leading exporter and had one of the best minds I have come across. One of his favourite sayings was that ‘those who work in a honey packaging factory, would surely lick their fingers from time to time’. It was well recognized that officials at the lower level, dealing directly with the public—the patwari, the revenue collection amin, the constable in the thana—all would be appeased or propitiated with a tip or some token of gratitude by a citizen when his work was done. During Mughal times, the local satrap could do whatever he wanted and extract as much as he could, so long as he maintained control, paid tribute to the emperor and was loyal. The same applied to the entire hierarchy. The British brought in the concept of the higher civil services, un-bribable, totally dedicated to their task, who were like Plato’s guardians charged with the responsibility of serving the public. They were paid a princely salary in the 19th century (the salary fixed by Cornwallis for a Commissioner in the early 1800s was

3,000 which continued for a hundred years). While intellectual dishonesty crept into the higher civil services from the time of independence, financial dishonesty used to be a total rarity in the Indian Administrative Services—the picture has sharply deteriorated in this respect in the past two decades.

Wherever you go, whichever agency you look into at the Centre or at the state level which deals with people’s issues (as all do), you will find corruption ranging from very large to extremely large. Sometime in 2012, an amateur found out through his cell phone camera that 36 beat policemen, in different parts of the same town in Maharashtra, on the same day, were caught on camera taking bribes, on an average ranging from

200 to

500 and in one instance

4,000, from passing motorists, motorcyclists and others. Repeat this scenario in every small town, every village, every metro; repeat the search in every office everywhere in India—passport office, ration card office, driving license office; the block, the thana, the tehsil, the collectorate, the list can go on and on—the conclusion is inescapable that petty corruption at the field level is universal. Every District Magistrate, every Superintendent of Police, every field head of the department knows exactly how much and where the corruption is. If they are made responsible, accountable, with the fear of god put in them with their career at stake and interference eliminated, it is a safe bet that corruption levels will come down by 75 per cent (my loose estimate—don’t ask me to prove it mathematically) in short order. Clearly everyone concerned is happy—nothing needs to be done—a citizen should learn to pay bribes, cheerfully and happily!

Corruption can be categorized in different ways, petty versus grand, transactional versus policy related, political versus administrative, centralized (mafia type) versus decentralized. A form of low level corruption, the equivalent of a ‘tip’ has existed in India and elsewhere from times immemorial. ‘Baksheesh’ as a word is still used in Germany and many other countries, as in India, to connote low level corruption, the word probably originating from Turkish. The concept of a bribe relates to when ‘rent’ is demanded as a right, for a legitimate service supposed to be rendered free of charge. Such corruption at the thana and tehsil levels has been known in India for centuries. With massive development funds flowing to rural areas in the post-independence era, large leakages ingeniously devised, blending with ascendancy of local politics, poor supervision and weak punitive action have encouraged rapid growth of this phenomenon. Thus, a policeman’s job is coveted. If a new police recruit at the lowest level has to pay

2 or

3 lakh for being selected (the prevailing rates about ten years back), one can imagine that he would have to borrow the money from relatives and moneylenders at usurious rates. No wonder his compulsion to repay the loan force him into corrupt practices from the very day he enters the service. In the course of time his blood-thirst increases by the day as it advances to rapacious levels. My taxi driver told me once that his brother was in the short-list for employment as a guard in Delhi Metro and he was asked to make a payment of

1.5 lakh for final selection. The malaise has spread far and wide in the citizen-contact segments. The 2-G, Coalgate and other recent scams have abundantly illustrated how corruption is now a normal way of life in our political sector. Politics is now big business; heavy investments are made with a view to getting major returns. Just to illustrate how open the issue is, a Union minister (belonging to the Congress Party) in a television programme in November 2012 categorized the Congress chief of a major state as ‘a mafia don—he is a don in mining, liquor and land’. Rajiv Gandhi as prime minister had once commented that only 16 per cent of development funds reach the intended beneficiary indicating the enormity of leakages and the extent of corruption with which a common citizen has to contend.

The 1960s and 1970s could be characterized as an era of shortages of cement, steel, heavy chemicals and nearly every item of industrial and common use. The license-permit raj which was the order of the day, allowed large scale rent-seeking by those in power during that period. It was thus in the early 1970s that L.N. Misra, the then commerce minister could openly run an assembly-line operation for issuing import licenses against payment of cash. He was ably assisted and supported by some members of the civil services. In Uttar Pradesh, for example, in the early 1970s, a small-scale industry minister ran a similar operation in his office with an application to be presented in one room for allotment of steel, cash representing the premium for the license to be paid in the next room and the permit to be collected in the adjoining room—in an extremely efficient operation, the total transaction taking not more than ten minutes! It was well known that a Director of Industries in Uttar Pradesh openly replicated the same practice, with the beneficiaries surrendering the permits to a ‘consolidating’ dalal (middleman/broker), sitting right in the directorate’s compound, to bulk the permits into truck-or-rake-loads. The director could function openly with impunity since he ensured that 500 tonnes were reserved for the nominees of the chief minister every month—this was his ‘protection money’. The unholy nexus between willing civil servants and politicians had its origins during this era—a major advance from the ‘cutting-edge’ low level corruption at the tehsil or block or thana levels suffered by a citizen, to institutionalization of transactional corruption.

That large family-owned business houses, relatively few in number, were able to influence policymaking in a significant manner, was well established by the mid-1960s. The advent of Dhirubhai Ambani on the industrial scene in India raised this to a new dimension. Nearly from scratch, within a few years, the Ambani group was able to build a large empire, mainly enabled by ensuring that an extremely friendly and beneficial policy atmosphere was continually created and improved at the occasion of each budget or import/export policy announcement, and in-between. The fine art of building a business empire not so much by work in the field but through a liaison network based in Delhi became established. In due course this included influencing Members of Parliament to lobby effectively in and out of Parliament and ensuring that key ministries in Delhi at the secretariat and political levels were populated by the nominees of a business house became normal practice. The Radia tapes give a clear insight into the way in which business houses apparently have a large say in appointments of ministers and officials, as well as general skulduggery in governance. In the 1990s it was not uncommon to hear of this or that chief minister amassing a fortune of

500 crore; by today’s opulent standards, this may be low but the seeds were planted in the politico-administrative scene at the Centre and in the states during those days. It was also the era when Indira Gandhi wanted ‘committed’ civil servants. Initially the commitment referred to policy, then to the party and then to the minister concerned, with whom eventually the civil servant who would cooperate, moved on to become a collaborator, and anon a co-conspirator, sharing a part of the spoils. Politics rapidly became a new lucrative field for making money. Much like when a new petroleum field or gold mine opens up, people entered politics exclusively with the idea of making large fortunes.

Typical of the innovations used was the case of the ‘business magic’ wrought by the ‘aam admi’ Robert Vadra, when he earned a cool

50 crore, on zero investment in just a couple of months by facilitating the change in ‘land use’ from ‘agriculture’ to ‘residential’. Many other innovations, each exceeding the earlier in brilliance have manifested themselves in the current century. To name only a few, 2-G and Coalgate are outstanding examples of mal-governance. It is surprising how much the government can lend itself to manipulation and abuse at the expense of the common man.

It needs to be understood that the active assistance and collaboration of a civil servant is imperative in this process of determined and reckless money making that a political executive has reduced itself to. Thus, officers are assessed with great care to see who will collaborate and eventually conspire and who will be squeamish and needs to be sidelined ruthlessly. Thus, the civil services was broken into three categories—the majority who would quietly implement orders without looking left and right, the relatively few who were totally upright and dared to express their views (and were consequently sidelined), and the chosen few who became partners wielding power and collaborating closely with the rulers.

A number of significant factors combined leading to the current debilitating levels of corruption in the country. Firstly, our Constitution makers did not imagine that human nature will manifest itself given the opportunity, that ‘power corrupts’. A political executive, which realized its true position and strength in the system only from the 1970s, was not countered with any checks and balances and had unbridled authority without effective over-sight—the need for an effective ‘Lok Pal’ had not been visualized by Nehru, who imagined that all politicians following him would be of the same high nobility of purpose and imbued with a sense of public service.

The second major area relates to the failure of the IAS, the premier civil service of the country, to stand up united against the onslaught of the unenlightened self-interest of the political class. Without taking away in any manner from the great service rendered by the higher civil services in maintaining the unity and integrity of the country under very difficult circumstances—one shudders to think what could have happened to the country in the first three decades without the high quality civil service structure that we are blessed with—it is also a fact that the civil services allowed themselves to be infiltrated and dominated, and now silenced by the political class, who used all possible allurements for their ends. This process was also aided significantly by the Indira Gandhi diktat asking for a ‘committed’ civil servant. Another significant factor is the relative benign eye with which the judiciary at all levels has dealt with the issue of corruption. In general, exemplary and punitive impositions have not been sanctioned in swift proceedings on delinquent officials and politicians. Thus, Sukh Ram can roam free, changing political colours at will and thus, after 20 years of being charge-sheeted, the country still does not know if Lalu Yadav is a big crook or a great benefactor. All over the world, the main weapon against corruption is swift, exemplary, deterrent punishment. In India, while investigating and prosecuting agencies need to share a large part of the blame, our judiciary has not asserted itself enough to contribute to a clean system.

In summer 2013, it was reported that the railway minister of China Liu Zhiyu was convicted in a court of law for corruption. He was alleged to have amassed $10 million over a 25-year period. The punishment awarded was death. We now see as to how the Chinese take the issue of corruption seriously and could divine the linkages of this issue with the quality of development they have displayed. Apparently, it took only three months in China for the investigation and conclusion of the trial. The amount involved is roughly

60 crore, over a 25-year period—surely this would look trivial in the eyes of most of our politicians, many of whom probably spend as much in one election, to recover five-times as much during the following tenure of office. Our own railway minister, whose nephew was caught red-handed on a senior railway posting matter (squarely in the province of the railway minister) is not even an accused in the case—he will probably give evidence that nobody is guilty! Most self-respecting ministers in state governments would treat the amount of wealth amassed by the Chinese minister as piffling—recent central government scams have thrown up very large numbers. The Chinese event is a rude reminder to us as to how casual we are in dealing with such major governance issues.

There are other many equally important reasons. These include state control of major investigative agencies like the CBI, Enforcement Directorate and state vigilance directorates and the ineptitude of constitutional and statutory watchdog agencies like the CVC. We have recently witnessed what one person heading the CAG could do if he took his job seriously and realized that he was serving the people of India and not the government or political masters, and was bold and courageous in his investigations and his conclusions. It is a pity we have not seen too many examples of erstwhile civil servants, experienced and competent, who when given elevated responsibilities could shed their lapdog attitude and transcend and assume the full powers given to them by the Constitution or the statutes. T.N. Seshan showed the way in removing muscle power from the election scene, we need a new Seshan to rid our elections of money power.

There is no question that there is widespread corruption at the ‘cutting edge’ level. This has been endemic in India and has thrived through the Mughal times and also British times. This deep-rooted practice is a definite menace to society. It is the failure of the civil services class, the IAS and the other central services, that we have not been able to stamp out, or at least keep in-check, ‘transactional’ corruption. Classical excuses relate to political patronage, lack of political backing etc. etc. This ‘routine’ type of corruption needs to be distinguished from the kind of new post-independence corruption phenomenon where the business classes have abstracted licenses, approvals, changes in law and the like, and encouraged a wide variety of tampering with the regulatory structure for mutual reward between the businessmen on one side and the politician (supported by the bureaucrat) on the other, at the expense of the public. The tragedy is that with the ‘opening of the economy’ in the past two decades, the menace has grown to monstrous proportions.

The Indian Constitution is a well thought out and wonderful piece of work. However, it has one yawning gap—there is no effective body to check and monitor the political class. Every other group of people in India has a disciplining mechanism, in addition to the umbrella cover provided by ‘rule of law’. The founding fathers presumably thought that our politicians would be enlightened enough, and be so imbued in the spirit of public service, that they would not need a checking mechanism. This was major lack of foresight. Alas, power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely; our ruling classes are now steeped in the height of venality thanks to this glaring blunder by our Constitution makers. The concept of Ombudsman or Lok Pal was to repair this gap. It would have been naive to expect the political class to willingly shoot themselves in the foot as has been proved by the deliberately dithering approach to the continually diluted Lok Pal Bill in the past 40 years. No Lok Pal Bill is likely to be passed for the next 40 years, if our supreme body, the Parliament, is left to finally decide the matter on its own. Thanks to the magic wrought by Anna Hazare, this was, for a while, being forced down the throat of the political class or at least we thought so earlier; but now we know the ability of our political leaders to hoodwink the country indefinitely.

Much has been written and spoken about ‘unconstitutionality’, a dangerous precedent and such-like descriptions of the Lok Pal concept. It may be recalled that ever since the Magna Charta of the 11th century, the British constitutional law has been subject to major changes at least ten times due to ‘civil activism’. Then one heard the ridiculous comments by a senior minister that the proposed Lok Pal Bill will not change anything seriously. When criticized for this comment, his explanation was that the bill will not meet India’s development needs like provision of primary education etc.—an even more absurd and uninformed comment. It is widely recognized that the level of corruption has a vital bearing on the quality of governance; corruption is an element in the development matrix and has linkages with every other element including poverty, income distribution, public health, education and the like. It is surprising that such an unenlightened comment could have come from an articulate, vocal and prominent member of the Cabinet.

The focus now has to shift to the contours of a possible Lok Pal Bill. We need to give ourselves a strong Lok Pal, with wide ranging powers, who will keep a close watch on the political class as well as on the senior bureaucracy, both at the Centre and in the states. It is equally imperative to ensure that the work of the Lok Pal will not come into conflict with the normal work of the judiciary. It must be remembered that despite all its faults and warts, the country owes the judiciary a deep debt of gratitude for upholding our Constitution and generally maintaining ‘rule of law’. The judiciary’s powers should not be whittled down, or compromised—that will not be in the national interest.

The best role that can be played by a Lok Pal is to entrust him with the task of swift, non-dilatory, impartial examination of prima facie information/evidence. He needs to have wide-ranging powers to do this and be enabled to act suo motu . Clearly the Lok Pal should not be allowed to become a large bureaucracy, an administrative dinosaur, whose head may not know what the tail is thinking or doing. This institution should be slim, have a specific role to play and should have the authority to call, as the occasion demands, on the services of any other government or quasi-government agency for information, advice or investigation. This should preclude the Lok Pal from being a ‘corruption Czar’, with the role to examine all actions by everybody in the country. Such a move would be counter-productive as it may create a parallel system which would impede the work of the legitimate government.

As has been mentioned, in the case of a civil servant, there is a well established procedure, requiring the person to stand down from office temporarily, pending investigation. This ‘suspension’ procedure is not deemed to be punishment or admission/declaration of ‘guilt’. The official awaits the progress of the investigation, and is quickly ‘reinstated’ if he is exonerated at the investigation stage, or he is acquitted honourably after due process by the competent ‘judicial body’. It is well established in the case of civil servants that ‘suspension’ is no punishment. A similar dispensation is currently not being applied in the case of the political executives, who are equally public servants. None has the ‘fundamental right’ to hold public office. The really effective role that the Lok Pal can play is to ask a public servant to step down from his office till he is cleared through due process in a court of law; this would be based on the assessment of the Lok Pal taking into account the first-cut evidence, preponderance of probability and other circumstances with respect to a politician or senior bureaucrat against whom allegations have been levelled. After all there will be more harm to society in allowing a delinquent public official to hold office till he is finally convicted after exhausting all appeals, than the occasional ‘miscarriage’ of denying public office to an innocent person. Besides I cannot think of any politician or minister or official in the past four decades that the country would have seriously missed if he had been denied public office !

It is not envisaged that the Lok Pal will be a weak office, with limited powers, responsibilities and jurisdiction. It is conceived as an extremely powerful agency, a super watchdog, a custodian of probity and a powerful umpire overseeing the ruling classes. It will be counter-productive to bring the Lok Pal’s orders under the purview of the judiciary; his orders should be non-justiciable and would be deemed to constitute ‘due process’ for suspension of the political executive and higher bureaucracy, pending trial. The Lok Pal should also have unlimited powers to establish his own processes and procedures and to appoint special investigators or prosecutors in appropriate circumstances. He would have strong internal technological backup and powers to call on the services of any agency in the country. Similarly, his counterpart in the states, the Lok Ayuktas will have corresponding powers in the state, and would be under the umbrella of the Lok Pal.

For the Lok Pal institution to be effective, it is imperative that the main investigating agencies—the CBI, the ED, etc. at the Centre and vigilance directorates in the states—should be independent in their operations, and should not be controlled by the government. How this is to be organized is a matter of detail.

The institution of Lok Pal is not to be seen as the final solution to eliminate corruption in India. It would be the first, albeit the critical initial step, in the process. Electoral reforms, cleaning up the police system, tackling the black money issue etc. will all be part of an agenda, whose implementation has not even taken the first baby steps, due to lack of interest by the political executive. The Lok Pal could reverse this trend and eventually pave the way for superior governance.

If there is the will, corruption is one of the easiest areas to address and tackle in a relatively short period. Hong Kong, which was known as one of the most corrupt countries in the world was able to transform itself in short order—many other examples can be cited. All insiders know of the major areas where transactional and policy corruption flourish in the country at the central and state levels. If there is determined effort, if only the ruling classes resolve to root out corruption, the levels can be drastically reduced, if not totally eliminated. Sadly the ruling classes are the main beneficiaries, so it may be utopian to ask them to create a Damocles’ sword to hang over their own heads. It is in this context that we need to see the Anna Hazare or Ramdev movements—not to dismiss them as unguided, ‘undemocratic’ forces to ‘destabilize’ the system. They are a public cry that a sinking ship should be brought back to even keel. If the call is not heeded and corruption levels increase, with corresponding deterioration of public interest, the end of our Republic may not be far away.