People’s Parliament

Anna Hazare Versus The People Of India
Raja Murthy
22 August 2011

IF a few thousand slogan-screaming people taking to the streets over the weekend may be seen as support to Anna Hazare’s version of an anti-corruption campaign, then by the same measure, a few hundred million Indians staying put at home may be seen as grave misgivings about methods Hazare is using or misusing to fight corruption.
Most certainly, we want a corruption-free India. But Hazare’s process to eradicate corruption is also threatening to eradicate democracy.
In a free country, no individual can obstinately claim that he and his supporters alone know what is best for everybody else. This is what Hazare and his colleagues are doing, in rejecting any alternative path in discussion and debate that does not agree to their version of the proposed Lokpal bill.
Hazare may not realise it, but he is actually betraying the trust the people of India are expressing in him. The mass support against corruption that we are seeing is inspiring. It’s yet another wonderful indication that the future of this ancient civilization is in safe hands of the younger generation. Anyone with unshakable conviction that India is on the threshold of a golden age, will have unshakable faith in India’s young people. They are a better generation than their parents and teachers; and the generation that follows this young generation will be even better citizens in the path of progressive evolution of India.
But the discomfort arises over how Hazare is misusing the growing support against corruption, holding a gun to his own head and threatening the Prime Minister of the world’s largest democracy: “You agree to my point view, or go”. It’s not just an insult to democracy, but a gross betrayal of trust of thousands of young people supporting Hazare. They support Hazare’s campaign against corruption because they know he is not corrupt. Hazare has strong credibility in his anti-corruption campaign ~ unlike some highly corrupt media houses publishing banner headlines on Hazare’s anti-corruption campaign, while daily indulging in gross corruption by selling editorial space like advertisements.
One particular media house prominently supporting Hazare’s campaign, has in recent years institutionalised corruption. This media house has the brazen audacity to openly sell editorial space from an in-house agency specially created for this purpose: to sell editorial content and publish photographs like advertisements. It’s outrageous corruption, a criminal fraud on the reader who is being sold adulterated news and views, and a blatant threat to democracy. It’s like a member of Parliament setting up an agency to sell his vote in Parliament to the highest bidder. And it’s a sickening joke that this hypocritical Mumbai-based media house should be carrying screaming headlines against corruption.
For a corruption-free India, Anna Hazare and his colleagues can also immediately contact the proprietors and senior management of this media house and ask them for details about whether they operate an in-house entity to sell editorial space.
For, a corruption-free India has to have a corruption-free media. “To straighten the crooked, you must first do a harder thing,” said the Buddha, “Straighten yourself.”
For a straight, honest government, the individual needs to be honest. Corrupt politicians don’t magically pop out of hell or out of fruit markets. They emerge from a corrupt society. A corrupt people will invariably have corrupt representatives. This is the ugly truth that that we as a nation have to face.
Here’s my favourite anti-corruption story: In the I990s, a friend who was a senior manager in the Oberoi Grand was transferred out of Kolkata. While packing up their apartment in Middleton Row, his wife was complaining bitterly on the phone to her sister and mother in New Delhi of the bribes she had to pay to get the cooking gas connection transferred. And she was ranting about corruption by talking through an illegal STD line she got by bribing a contact in the local telephone exchange. For a few hundred rupees monthly bribe, she saves a few thousand rupees in the expensive long distance phone call bills then. And she gets to complain long-distance about corruption, by even putting her illegal STD line on hold while she goes to the bathroom.
Before expecting the country to be corruption-free, each individual has to obviously first resolve to be uncompromisingly honest, whatever the cost. One makes mistakes in life, but obviously the willingness must be there to humbly accept one’s mistakes, and make honest efforts not to repeat the mistakes.
I cannot post anti-corruption messages on Facebook and Twitter, and then download pirated movies and music on the Internet, buy pirated books and CDs or black market tickets. If I start making excuses for my own corruption little or big, whether involving rupees ten or ten crore, then I have lost the right to point a finger at crooked politicians, who of course, have their own excuses for their corruption.
The finger that points at the dirt in others has to be first cleaned. Hazare generates such support because he has clean fingers. But is he misusing the rare credibility he has ~ by stubbornly insisting that only his version of the Lokpal Bill should be accepted as good for the entire country? He is also imposing a deadline before which his viewpoint alone must be accepted. This is what hijackers and terrorist hostage-takers do: “agree to my demands by this time, or else….”
Held hostage is the invaluable ongoing mass support against corruption. However corrupt this government may be, and however much it has bungled in dealing with Hazare, the government is not refusing to pass any Lokpal Bill. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has put in place a constitutional process to do so. The legislation may have its merits and demerits, plus and minus, delays and hurdles. But this process, involving constitutional checks and balances, is the foundation of democracy ~ whatever its imperfections. India has a street-smart electorate to deal with corruption, sooner or later. Self-appointed activists would do well to ensure that their limited-vision solutions do not endanger the freedom and rights of the people of India. It would be somewhat naive to think that only Hazare’s version of another anti-corruption law, or a kangaroo court, will instantly end corruption. And there is no guarantee that the new Jan Lokpal watchdog, of the exact breed Hazare wants, will not turn corrupt after a few months, or be manipulated by anti-national elements.
“The people’s Parliament is supreme,” Hazare declared over the weekend. But India has only one people’s Parliament, where laws are made or changed. And Hazare is not a member of it. Instead, he is issuing threats to the people’s Parliament, and to the government that the people of India elected, to fully agree to his views within the deadline he has imposed.
Hazare, and his good-intentioned core supporters, should set aside their ego and carefully introspect whether they are getting carried away by the mass support. Every right-thinking Indian would support Hazare’s noble anti-corruption objectives, and his volition to selflessly serve India. But Hazare and his colleagues have to realize that their autocratic methods are creating a cure that is far more dangerous than the disease.

The above is from what was once my favourite newspaper, "The Statesman"
It has tried to present a balance view, however, I do not agree with it.
We, the people of India have waited 64 years for the politicians to do something to end their own corruption but they have never cared to do that.
Corruption has gone from strength to strength until water started flowing above the head when we had the G and CWG scams. In one respect we should thank Suresh Kalamadi & Co and A.Raja for what they did for it made the Indian people lose patience with its leaders. Yet the politicians did not take any action, shrugging it off as a result of coalition dharma. It was left to the august Supreme Court to force the CBI to act. By itself the CBI would not have taken action as it was under the same politicians.

No matter now the PM says now that they will pass a strong Lokpal bill but the bill they have presented to the Standing Committee is full of loopholes and has been termed as "Promotion of Corruption" bill rather than a "Prevention of Corruption"
bill.

I am sory, but I and millions of others who are on the street supporting Anna do not agree with you. This is the only way the government will act.

This is not the end. Civil society should take up the people's representation act to see that scums, scoundrel,smugglers, extortionists, rapists, murderers do not become our representatives. They have initiate processes so that we can reject all the candidates if found unsuitable and also to withdraw elected members who do not perform.

We cannot give blank cheques with 5 years validity anymore so that they can do what they want citing that Parliament is Supreme. It is, if the parliamentarians act that way. They do not.

They cite that our founding fathers like Dr. Ambedkar knew what they were doing when they wrote the Constitution.. Unfortunately those people did not take into consideration that such scoundrels would become peoples representatives. They were only aware of the colleagues who were around them, the Freedom Fighters.

They are also citing technical difficulties saying that they have to follow procedures which are more than 300 years old. What rubbish!! Man makes the rules and not the other way round. When it came to the declaration of Emergency, they could do it within three days. When parliamentarians wanted to increase their salary, they could get the bill passed in three days. They are just waiting and watching to see how long the people demonstrate with Anna.They are just watching how long Anna lasts. Which will fail first, the support or Anna's health.

We are lucky, the people have adopted this peaceful way to get their way instead of the path followed by Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, Libya and other Muslim countries.