Lokpal has flattered to deceive

THE seven-member Lokpal team has sought seven BMW cars for its use. The demand has caused a public uproar, though there is nothing surprising about it. It’s what all recipients of sinecures expect.

The main question critics should ask is what they themselves expected the Lokpal to achieve? Poor Anna Hazare,

an ex-soldier-turned-crusader, expected corruption to be reduced, if not eradicated, if the Lokpal kept breathing down the necks of the corrupt. Those who set Anna on the path of demanding such a solution, such as Arvind Kejriwal and Kiran Bedi, were themselves bureaucrats who should have known better. Hazare and the common man he cares about want a crackdown on the small-scale corruption that needles them daily. No Lokpal would be able to achieve that.

Ranga Rao, my friend and colleague in the NGO called Public Concern for Governance Trust, is an old IB (Intelligence Bureau) hand. Fighting corruption is an important part of his personal agenda. When I had told him that the demand for a Lokpal, if conceded, was going to end in disappointment, he stared at me in disbelief. He admits now that I was right.

Selecting a potential crusader as a Lokpal member is the first major hurdle to cross. There was a judge I knew who would fit the bill perfectly. Justice CS Dharmadhikari of the Bombay High Court, who graced the Bench during my police service, was one such crusader. When I returned to Mumbai after four years in Romania, where I served as India’s ambassador, the good judge phoned me and invited me to meet him at his residence. I readily agreed.

He wanted to confront corrupt police officers and high court judges head-on so that the criminal justice system would at least become more acceptable to the people. What he suggested was that I should phone each of the recalcitrant IPS officers and request them to live within their means. He, on his part, would tread a similar path with their lordships.

I replied that I was already unpopular with many of my ex-colleagues and I did not want them to even stop nodding at me in recognition. But Justice Dharmadhikari was not going to give up in a hurry. He contacted Principal Judge Agniar of the City Civil and Sessions Court (he later became an HC judge) and succeeded in arranging a meeting of all sessions judges in Mumbai which Justice Dharmadhikari and I addressed. Lacking the courage of the crusader, I did not dare to ask the police chief to arrange a similar meeting of IPS officers!

There is a strong feeling among those who care for justice and fair play that critics and opponents of the government are being targeted by probe agencies. Officers chosen for high office and judges given post-retirement sinecures will be selected from those who will not disturb the ideological divide, even if they do not personally subscribe to any ideology.

In the absence of political will, no Lokpal, except a crusader, will be able to fulfil the expectations raised by the 2011 anti-corruption movement spearheaded by Anna Hazare. The creation of seven posts in the Lokpal setup will only be a drain on the exchequer — without any concrete reciprocal returns.

If the polity wanted in its heart of hearts to combat corruption which troubled the anti-corruption crusaders led by Anna, it should have strengthened the Right to Information Act and the Right to Service legislation. The latter, enacted by states such as Maharashtra, compels officials to decide matters concerning citizens in a time-bound manner.

Surprisingly, even officials who are supposed to dispose of files in a specified time frame do not know that such a legislation has been on the statute book for the past few years. Penal clauses have not been clearly defined in this case, even as they have been specified in the RTI Act. But all top posts have been filled!

What do sinecures entail? Besides ‘last pay drawn’ at senior levels of the judiciary and the bureaucracy, accommodation, transport, secretarial assistance, telephones and other paraphernalia that accompany high office are all assured. The most important aspect of such deals is that favoured judges and bureaucrats, who normally retire at the age of 60 or 65, are kept in clover for another five years or even longer.

There is a great opportunity at present to re-employ judges to clear the backlog of pending court cases. Depending on the mental and physical health of those about to retire, they can be re-employed for five years at a time till they reach the age of 75. People will not grudge the expenditure incurred as the imperative of reducing pending cases in courts is of primary concern in upholding the rule of law.

The focus should be on criminal cases as undertrials languish in our jails for years. This is against all tenets of jurisprudence. It makes us look uncivilised. Besides, delay in punishing the guilty breeds contempt of the legal system itself, leading to the proliferation of crime and criminals.

Coming back to the BMW demand, the principle of equality requires that officials favoured with such cars while in office should continue with the same perks if they are offered sinecures after retirement. I, for one, would not grudge them their BMWs if they could bring some big sharks to book.

The Lokpal can concentrate on defaulters favoured by the party in power. These offenders are mostly those who have switched parties so that they can continue with their corrupt ways.