Fighting Corruption

editorial:

Anna Hazare has brought corruption to centre-stage, forced the nation to confront an embarrassment which has become insidiously all-pervasive in our country. The passion with which the people have found common cause with the stand espoused by the 72-year-old Gandhian is indicative of a shift in how corruption is perceived. Where does the nation go from here? Media attention might start flagging after the immediacy of a fast-unto-death has played out and public attention will soon shift to other issues to light a candle for, but if the condemnation of corruption rallied from Jantar Mantar grows into a collective and instinctive revulsion towards the corrupt, a substantial victory would have been achieved.
The stand-off between Anna Hazare and the Government is over the Lokpal Bill, and now that it has garnered so much media attention, it will be resolved. Eventually, the Lokpal Bill might even be drafted afresh with suggestions from ‘India Against Corruption’ included in it. The Bill, even in its successively watered down versions, has already failed eight times to get through the Parliament, so it is unlikely that a stronger Bill will get passed any time soon. Even if it does get passed and a strong and unbiased Lokpal gets appointed, it will not root out corruption from India.
The moment a Lokpal gets appointed, the office becomes part of the system and inherits its weaknesses and compromises. Also, it is unfair to expect one institution alone to right a society’s wrongs; it can’t. The CBI, almost exclusively handling corruption cases now, and the CVC remain under-performers not only because they take orders from political masters, but more so because corruption has become so deep-rooted that it has become impossible to even book all the guilty, let alone win convictions against all cases charge-sheeted. When the charter handed out is obviously impossible to deliver on, compromises sit easy on the conscience. Corruption pervades not in the absence of adequate laws, rules and checks, but because the people at large have started not only accepting, but also endorsing it. Every time we seek out ‘contacts’ to expedite personal works and to avoid waiting in line, we join the league of the corrupted. It is wrong to try and grade the different levels of corruption, because when it comes to this issue, one is either corrupt or upright, there are really no in-betweens. How does a Lokpal go about setting such a situation right?
If we, as a nation, are to allow ourselves even an outside chance to take on the monster of corruption, the Lokpal Bill has to be allied as a facilitator, not the deliverer. The larger battle will be to effect a paradigm shift in how we approach corruption. The first attitudinal change will have to be to stop accepting corruption as inevitable. At a personal level, this can be done by refusing to seek out ways to bend rules to avoid inconvenience and this can slowly grow to refusing to succumb to demands for bribes. Once this refusal to accept corruption as inevitable is reasonably established, the even more disturbing trend which actually endorses corruption will also go [accept it, it is not just job security which has parents preferring government employment for their children]. When that happens, the corrupt will be denounced by the people. At present, only the corrupt who get caught risk public disapproval. Once we, as Indians, reach that stage, we won’t need the Lokpal anymore and the existing laws, investigating agencies and courts will be checks enough. If we cannot reach that agreement as a people, even Anna Hazare himself as the Lokpal cannot defeat corruption.