Despite all the economic outlook which has often been the mask of the inefficiency of Indian government in the past ten years, India is the leading source of black money. Indians have stashed 1.45 trillion dollars in Swiss banks more than all the other countries put together. [1] Incidentally this is around the Indian GDP [2] and is more than five times the external debt of India[3]. The worse part of the Indian's corruption landscape is that most of the corruption occurs bottoms up and over the past few years perception of corruption has grown higher. According to a survey carried out, 91% of the bribes has an origin in the government officials [3.5].India now ranks around the 90th position in corruptions perception index [4]. It gets even worse. As the classic saying goes "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? "According to a report by Transparency International- India, around 4000 crore rupees was paid for bribes for police.[5] Almost 80% of people interacting with the police have paid a bribe to the person whose duty is to uphold the law and in almost cases, the bribes were directly paid to the officers showing an institutionalization of the practice. All this despite the fact that almost 800 crores is paid for modernization of the police force [6]. Rubbing salt on the wound of Indian development is that even in case where there is money for development not tainted by corruption, it is not used in a productive manner and often gets lost in the labyrinth of Indian bureaucracy. The Hindu on a report by a Comptroller and Auditor-General of India (CAG) says that there is a one lakh crore of foreign aid which is just sitting idle instead of welfare projects. Indian government actually paid for not using this money.
What Anna Hazare has undertaken is a noble and much needed task. Corruption amongst government officials is now at such a stage that most corrupt politicians are brazen about it. There appears now fear of retribution for wrongdoing. The Lokpal bill aims to do exactly that. While the government bill lacks the teeth to prosecute the guilty, the Jan Lokpal bill proposed by the the India against Corruption movement aims to create an independent authority with the power to go after those who are corrupt even in the highest positions. Besides Anna Hazare, many other prominent personalities such as Kiran Bedi, Swami Agnivesh, Arvind Kejriwal, Swami Ramdev, Archbishop Vincent M Concessao besides others.
Much as disillusioned as one can be about the state of Indian government, we can take solace in the fight to get the Right To Information into law. Arvind Kejriwal gave an excellent lecture into the same.
The main reason for the success of RTI lies in the section 20 (1) which states
" Where the Central Information Commission or the State Information
Commission, as the case may be, at the time of deciding any complaint or appeal is of the
opinion that the Central Public Information Officer or the State Public Information Officer,
as the case may be, has, without any reasonable cause, refused to receive an application for
information or has not furnished information within the time specified under sub-section
(1) of section 7 or malafidely denied the request for information or knowingly given
incorrect, incomplete or misleading information or destroyed information which was the
subject of the request or obstructed in any manner in furnishing the information, it shall
impose a penalty of two hundred and fifty rupees each day till application is received or
information is furnished, so however, the total amount of such penalty shall not exceed
twenty-five thousand rupees: "
However, there are still miles to go before this act becomes extremely effective. However, the most important take home message is that transparency helps clean up bureaucracy. It helps bring about the sense of accountability in Government officials.
Please support Anna Hazare and others in this momentous moment for India.
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