CREATING A
FRANKENSTEIN
By Justice Markandey Katju
I had been keeping silent throughout
the Anna Hazare Movement for creating a Lokpal (Janlokpal) because the media
(particularly electronic media) had so much hyped the issue and generated such
an emotional storm that anyone who would have raised some logical questions
would have immediately been branded as a ‘deshdrohi’ or ‘gaddar’. Anna Hazare
was depicted as a modern messiah, who, like Moses, had come to rescue his
chosen people and lead them to a land of honey and milk.
Now
that the brouhaha and hullabaloo has subsided it is time to make a cool,
dispassionate, logical assessment of Mr. Hazare and his movement.
I
have no doubt that Anna Hazare is an honest man, but my point is that the
problems facing the country (and corruption is certainly one of them) are so
massive that they can only be solved by a rational, scientific approach, not by
emotional outbursts. Honesty alone is
not enough.
So
far as I could gather, Anna Hazare has no scientific ideas. Consider two of his
statements:
1. His solution to alcoholism is to tie
alcoholics to a pole and whip them. Is this a rational solution? Most poor
people who drink liquor in this country drink cheap country liquor, not scotch.
They drink to get some temporary relief from their miserable lives. To abolish
alcoholism among them would be possible only by abolishing poverty, and that
can be done by raising their standard of living and giving them decent lives.
This is a gigantic task, and cannot be solved by flogging them in public.
2. Anna Hazare demands a right to recall
elected representatives. But how is that possible within the system? Supposing
a law is made that a motion can be moved for recall of an M.L.A. or M.P. signed
by 10,000 voters. But for getting this motion passed there will have to be
voting by all the voters in the constituency. This would mean another election.
Is this feasible? An election entails a huge amount of expenditure, can a poor
country like ours have repeated elections? I think the idea is totally
impractical.
Now coming to the Lokpal Bill,
whether Janlokpal Bill or Sarkari Lokpal Bill, it envisages overseeing the work
of some 55 lac government employees in the country (of which 13 lacs are in the
Railways alone), from Prime Minister to peon. Surely one person cannot enquire
into the lacs of complaints which are bound to pour in. It will require
thousands of Lokpals, may be 50,000 of them to do this. All these have to be
provided salaries and other amenities, housing, offices, staff etc. And then
where is the guarantee that these will not themselves become corrupt? In fact
considering the low level of morality prevailing in India, we can be fairly
certain that a large number of them will become blackmailers. In my opinion, the Lokpal Bill will create a
parallel bureaucracy, which will turn into a Frankenstein monster. Instead of
curtailing corruption, in all probability at a stroke it will double or triple
corruption in the country.
I
regret to say that the implications of creating such an apparatus were not
rationally thought out, and instead some people thought that all problems of
corruption will be solved by shouting ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai’ or ‘Inquilaab
Zindadbad’ from Jantar Mantar or Ram Lila Ground.
I
may clarify that I am not against any kind of Lokpal. Justice Hegde did a
fantastic job in exposing the corruption of the mining mafia in Karnataka. But
the type of Lokpal envisaged in the Janlokpal Bill or Government Lokpal Bill
are clearly impractical and unworkable.
I
would therefore respectfully urge Parliament to defer consideration of the Bill
before it and refer the matter to a Standing Committee (as Shri Lalu Yadav has
suggested) where experts from various fields in the country and outside be
invited to give their views, and only then a workable Lokpal machinery can be
created. Passing Bills in a hurry and under pressure of some people having
their own agenda will only add to the huge problems facing the country.
