Has the Political Class Failed Us?

A. Surya Prakash
Senior Fellow, VIF

The end of `Operation Jantar Mantar’ by Team Anna without any tangible gains vis-à-vis the fight against corruption and the indications from within government that the Lokpal and Lokayuktas Bill, 2011 may not come up for debate until the Winter Session of Parliament – should come as a major disappointment for all citizens who believe in the pursuit of peaceful and democratic solutions for major problems confronting the country.

With Anna Hazare virtually throwing his hands up and signalling the failure of the tried and tested Satyagraha route, every section of the political class, and this includes the ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA), the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), the Third Front and the still nebulous Fourth Front, must be laughing all the way to their respective vote banks. This is a moment of triumph for politicians as a whole because they have successfully beaten back, at least for the moment, the biggest threat that was posed to their corrupt ways. The UPA of course is leading from the front and has been able to stop the anti-corruption movement dead in its tracks.

One year ago, as the Anna Hazare Movement picked up, the UPA government introduced the Lok Pal Bill in the Lok Sabha and repeatedly claimed that it was committed to the passage of this law. Other members of the political class made similar noises and swore that they too were keen on having an independent ombudsman to probe cases of corruption. However, within parliament there was an unwritten agreement among all parties that they should not go beyond rendering lip service to the anti-corruption movement. All parties also believed that by dragging the issue, they could tire out the crusaders. This plan appears to have worked. Twelve months hence, the anti-corruption crusade has become a victim of middle class ennui and the much-talked about bill has virtually gone into cold storage.

Caught in a maze of corruption, the UPA government was not keen on having an independent Lokpal. But it was not alone. It got some overt and covert backing from virtually the entire political class. The government introduced the Lokpal Bill on August 4, 2011 in the Lok Sabha and immediately referred it to a Standing Committee head by Mr.Abhishek Manu Singhvi. This gave the government a much-needed breather and also an excuse. It asked Team Anna and others to advance their arguments before the committee. The Singhvi Committee recommended that the Lokpal must have constitutional status and parliament must take a call on whether to bring the Prime Minister within the purview of the Lokpal. It said group A and group B employees must be brought within the purview of the Lokpal, but the Chief Vigilance Commissioner should have jurisdiction over group C and D staff. The committee wanted MPs to be kept out of the Lokpal’s purview in so far as their vote, speech and conduct in parliament was concerned. The judiciary was also to be outside the Lokpal’s jurisdiction. It suggested a single law for establishment of the Lokpal and the Lokayukras in the states. Once the committee’s report was tabled, the government withdrew the bill it had introduced in August and came up with a new bill – The Lokpal and Lokayuktas Bill, 2011.

After much debate, which drew nation-wide attention, this bill was passed by the Lok Sabha and the government raised the expectations of the people by pretending that it would see the legislation through in the Rajya Sabha as well. However, the government’s real intention – to stall the passage of this legislation – became clear when the bill came up for discussion in the Upper House on the last day of the Winter Session in December, 2011. The Congress Party’s floor managers cleverly ensured that MPs belonging to many small and regional parties raised objections and obstructed the debate. Thereafter, as the debate dragged on, the party took advantage of the commotion in the House and mischievously ensured the adjournment of the House sine die, even though MPs wanted the debate to be concluded. With the abrupt adjournment of the House, the curtain came down on the Winter Session of Parliament, thereby giving the government yet another breather.

However, when the Budget Session of Parliament opened in February this year, the UPA resumed its subterfuge. It promised to complete the legislative process in the Upper House but sprang a surprise on parliamentarians and the nation as a whole last May, when it announced the bill was being referred to yet another committee – a select committee of the Rajya Sabha. Sadly, the BJP became a party to the government’s dilatory tactics. This committee has been given time till the end of the Monsoon Session in September to submit its report. So, even as Anna Hazare and Co have ended yet another indefinite fast in order to live to fight another day, there are indications that the bill will not come up for discussion until the Winter Session of Parliament this year. Going by the prevailing mood in the political class, do not be surprised if this bill too suffers the fate of all previous Lokpal Bills and lapse when the present Lok Sabha is dissolved in May, 2014 or earlier.

In the year gone by, the UPA government has slipped further down on the credibility meter and strangely, it is taking the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) along with it. As the main opposition party, the BJP ought to have been the moral policeman and the standard-bearer for clean governance, but it is even more irrelevant today than it was a year ago. The Congress and the BJP are now seen as two sides of the same coin. The people feel that they are merely engaged in a mock fight and they are tired of listening to the same old rhetoric. Film maker Shekhar Kapur correctly summed it up when he said the debate is not about the failure of the UPA but about the failure of the political system itself.

“India does not need change of government but change in political system. 65 years of current system has created huge divide between the people and governance”, he said in one of his recent tweets.

The Emperor’s Frayed Clothes

PP Shukla

Joint Director, VIF

One important chapter of the Anna movement has ended; a new one is set to begin. Time, perhaps, to pause and take stock of what went wrong, why the promise of August fizzled by December 2011.

The principal failure – for failure is what we are seeing, no matter how it is dressed up – was caused by the fact that Team Anna, and Anna himself, displayed the very faults that they were fighting against. The irony is that they did not see this. And when forced to confront it, they resorted to petulance or brazen denial.

Corruption was their main plank. And yet, all the principal members of the Team, and the most articulate ones for sure, were themselves exposed. What made things worse was that each time one or other individual was exposed, Anna condoned it. Not only did this expose the double standard that was being applied, but it also showed the arrogance of Anna who seemed to set himself up as the arbiter of right and wrong in these matters. Importantly, it raised the legitimate question: if these men and women were going to be tempted by the piffling amounts they swindled, how could they be expected to resist the much bigger temptations that power would surely bring?

Anna was also in the habit of calling the Government gaddars. No question about it, this Government has done very nearly all it can to hurt the country’s national interests, most notably on national security matters. They have left the country dangerously unprepared for any military challenge that may appear in the near term. Yet, here was Prashant Bhushan saying we should be prepared to let go of Kashmir. And again Anna set himself up as arbiter and declared that he disagreed but Bhushan would not be made to pay for this egregious betrayal of the country’s supreme interests.

As if all this was not enough, there was the question of protection for the whistle-blower. Anna’s own blogger, Parulekar, found that there was no protection for him if the whistle were blown against Anna. In a well-publicised case, Parulekar was sacked for bringing out the differences within Team Anna, and the unhealthy trends emerging within it. And again, Anna got away with it, because the media were giving him an easy time, for reasons of their own.

Anna’s own tendencies need to be understood too. Firstly, the inconsistency that has been remarked upon earlier, showed up again over the famous slapping incidents, one involving the self-same Prashant Bhushan, the other involving Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar. The first incident attracted unbridled anger from Anna, and rightly so. But on the other, he went so far as to imply that one slap was not enough for Pawar. Again, this is not in defence of Pawar – God knows he has enough to atone for. But the inconsistency was glaring – and inexplicable. Further, when Anna was confronted with this inconsistency and asked to explain, he walked away from the interview.

The Team is also wont to make grand claims that their finances are all there for the country to see. And they are never challenged by the media, where they make such tall claims. Here is what happened to me, writing under a pseudonym. I sent an email to Anna on his feedback address asking for his financial statements; within minutes I got a reply, automated I suspect, from a Suresh saying that he would get back to me soon. That was in August 2011. Since then, I have sent two reminders, but there has been no response. This is not to suggest that there is any financial impropriety in Anna personally, but that the tall claims of transparency are definitely hollow. As to whether their finances are indeed clean, we need details in order to be able to judge. Again, for accuracy, it should be added that charges against Anna have been probed and nothing has incriminated him.

Then there is the issue of nepotism. There is a father and son team working as part of the core committee. No doubt, Anna considers them very competent lawyers, but was it really necessary to find a father and son team? If a Minister or a leader of any political party were to do this – as indeed most are doing – do we not criticise the nepotism implicit? And especially here we have charges of soft corruption against them, and of course, of being a gaddar against one of them.

These facts provide as good an explanation as any for the collapse of the movement started in April 2011, and received with such enthusiasm by the people of the entire country. By the time of the Mumbai fiasco, it was clear that the movement was dying down. Just as well: the actual draft of the Anna team for the Lokpal bill was really a power grab. It is a safe bet, borne out by many TV interviews of the people who gathered to support Anna at Ram Lila grounds in August 2011, that most of the people had not read the grandly-titled “Jan” Lokpal bill. The kind of power that it gave to the Lokpal would have effectively ended the separation of powers that is so important in a system like ours.

Anna has now recognised that one phase is over, and he has rid himself – so it seems – of Team Anna. Politically, there are very difficult times ahead for the country. The General Elections of 2014 have been likened by someone to the Fourth Battle of Panipat. Indeed, the future of our country as an independent country, no less, is at stake. Anna’s latest is that he is going to plunge into electoral politics, though he does not appear to have decided what precise form this will take. He must weigh his options very carefully, realising that Brand Anna is frying and he does not have the cushion to be able to get away with too many more mistakes. As a nationalist, he must clear away all the cobwebs in his mind, and the persons, that led him astray. The coming year-and-a-half will undoubtedly see very rough tactics, and the nationalist forces must be ready to confront them at all stages and at all levels.