"THESE STRUGGLES SHOULD NOT BE BRANDED AS BLACKMAILING TACTICS THESE ARE TESTI- MONIES OF A VIBRANT DEMOCRACY, WHERE RIGHT TO DISSENT IS PROTECTED AS A CARDINAL PRINCIPLE"
DR PROMOD KUMAR,DIRECTOR IDC AND CHAIRMAN PUNJAB GOVERNANCE REFORMS COMMISSION
The crisis of governance is all pervasive. The message is loud and clear. The nation is not taken in by the rhetoric of political leaders branding others as more corrupt. People are fed up with mudslinging theatrics of political parties. And, in every election asking people to vote for the lesser evil. In addition, yesterday's villains present themselves as heroes of today. The political game of musical chairs has been disrupted by the screaming millions on the streets. The message is, `Enough is enough. We are fed up.'
Recent events have shown that the language of power and wealth is different from the language of protest and justice.
The language of protest has been the incarnation of super icons, be it Annaji or the lokpal. And, nobody is listening to the language of justice. The language of power has been procedural, legalistic and threatening. It was procedural when the government abdicated its responsibility to deal with the political protest against corruption and for the lokpal to Delhi Police. It is not a recent development. Earlier, the state had abdicated its responsibility for providing access to education, health, livelihood and distributive justice to the market.
It was legalistic, as was asserted, that the civil society activists misappropriated the function of Parliament to enact laws. Not recognising the fact that laws are enacted by Parliament, but evolved as per the needs of the times, protest movements nurtured by rightbased consciousness, globalisation and marketisation. For instance, introduction of the women's reservation bill was a consequence of a long protracted movement. These struggles should not be branded as blackmailing tactics.
These are testimonies of a vibrant democracy, where right to dissent is protected as a cardinal principle.
It was threatening as it started a witch-hunt of those who were leaders of this movement.
Only the pure, who never commit a sin, have the right to a point finger at the sinner. First, it targeted Baba Ramdev and then Anna's team. They were accused of corrupt practices.
The signal was that if you support the anti-corruption campaign, be ready to be targeted for your past mistakes. The anger was so deep that these tactics could not deter people from coming out in large numbers.
The language of Anna's team is liberating for the people with means or resources from the shackles of corruption and harassment. It is also in celebration of creation of super icons like the janlokpal. We have in the Eighties seen the birth of super cops in the fight against terrorism. This role was passed on to the judiciary in the Nineties. Now, we have an overactive judiciary with super-judges trying to perform all functions but their own. The backlog of cases is huge. People have to wait for more than 15 years to get justice. Earlier, we have also witnessed the rebirth of the Election Commission with super-regulator TN Seshan. All these overactive institutions did perform exemplary roles in their fields. But the damage they caused to the system cannot be overlooked.
It took a while to make the Election Commission function without violating the space of other organs. It required tremendous effort to send the police back to the barracks.
The stress and strains caused by judiciary by their interference in the functioning of the legislature and executive is now under the lens. There are lessons to be learnt from these developments. Now, the onus of building a just, honest and humane society has been attributed to the janlokpal. But somebody has to take out heavy insurance against future failure of the lokpal -there comes talk of a second republic to start the process all over again.
No doubt, the issues raised by Anna are genuine. And, there is a need to have an autonomous and transparent institutional mechanism for reducing corruption. The crisis is much deeper, as rules of governance have become so overtly violative that the system has been rendered nonfunctional. Earlier, an easy explanation used to be the prevalence of corruption, high transaction costs and lack of transparency. An interesting outcome is that even corruption has ceased to perform one of its foremost functions, i.e., facilitation and efficiency. This has been exemplified in the preparation for the Commonwealth Games, wherein even large-scale corruption could not induce efficiency.
Along with the establishment of a lokpal (not as a super icon), there is a need to strengthen internal accountability mechanisms within each organ of the state and empower citizens to participate in decision-making at every level.
Some of these initiatives have been introduced in Punjab on the recommendations of the Punjab Governance Reforms Commission.
Foremost, an initiative is to be taken to restore the identity of citizens. Even after 64 years of Independence, citizens have to prove their identity.
This mistrust has been institutionalised to the extent that, even to prove their name, they have to seek affirmation from a gazetted officer of the government. The govern-mentality continues to treat citizens as colonial subjects.
Along with loss of identity, lack of respect and dignity is reflected in everyday interactions of the people with the government. The spatial disconnect experienced by the citizens in the police stations or district collectorates is more pronounced.
A third set of prerequisites relates to productivity, i.e., to engage people with the system in such conditions as may nurture their capacity to be productive. Instead, a culture of sharing of the spoils is being reinforced. Subsidies directed at the poor are given as dole and subsidies directed to protect the profits are described as `rescue' packages.
A fourth set of prerequisites relates to the allocation of roles to the various institutions. The tendency to empower institutions, now lokpal, with an overarching ad hoc licence is like killing poison with poison and letting the patient die. This has made governance less a matter of politics, and more administrative policy or discretionary political interference.
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By DR PROMOD KUMAR (COURTESY HINDUSTAN TIMES,AUG.,22,2011 IN GUEST COLUMN),
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