7 ms·

History made in India: Govt agrees to anti-corruption bill

166 points by combiclickwise 15y ago

digamber_kamat 15y ago
Hardly any history. Matter of time this becomes another useless institution.
- dimmuborgir 15y ago
  Well it's not a constitutional body. So as long as it remains independent (most likely) it'll be lethal against corruption.
  - asdkl234890 15y ago
    So as long as it remains totally independent (most likely) it'll be lethal against corruption. But what if someone tries to corrupt them? What makes them immune from corruption?
    - blinkingled 15y ago
      So you advocate genetically modified human beings to be created without the corruption gene to run an anti-corruption institution? Get off the high horses. It's all run by the people after all - you just hope to create a good balance of power and try to put better, educated people in places of power. There is no magic wand to suddenly rid of all malaise for you while you sit still and criticize. That's what the bill is trying to do.
      - cnu 15y ago
        In other words, you throw all kind of shit at the wall and see what sticks.
    - kartikrustagi 15y ago
      They can be corrupt, but then according to the proposed law every citizen will have a right to go to Supreme Court against the LokPal. This will surely be a deterrent.
      - vinutheraj 15y ago
        I don't think such deterrents are going to influence corruption. Does one decide not to harm someone, just because we have laws against it ? By the way, don't we already have laws against corruption, why hasn't this stopped anyone yet ? Are more laws going to stop it ?
    - dimmuborgir 15y ago
      A corrupt Lokpal can be removed within two months by the parliament.
      - vinutheraj 15y ago
        I think the constitution also has a process mentioned, on how to remove an MP, but that system is not working well. So how are you sure that this system will work. Why are we not urging them to fix the former system, instead of adding more.
        dimmuborgir 15y ago
        Apart from cabinet secretary Lokpal is answerable to Election Commission which is autonomous. Along with this, the election process of a Lokpal itself will reduce chances of corruption.
evolution 15y ago
Surely it's going to be part of history. Besides there are being RTI and other laws, it was much needed. This bill will be independent and answerable to people not government. Hope it helps for good.
- notanswerable 15y ago
  Actually they are not answerable to anyone.
  - ankeshk 15y ago
    Not true. They are answerable to the cabinet secretary and the election commission.
  - dimmuborgir 15y ago
    That's the most common FUD being spread against Lokpal.
Garbage 15y ago
Please note that, the bill is not passed yet. It will go to committee and will be discussed in the parliament again.
- dimmuborgir 15y ago
  Since Standing Committee is not autonomous and since there's a strong political opportunism in giving support to this ombudsman bill, it'll most likely be passed without much difficulty.
GeneTraylor 15y ago
(note: I don't mean to be rude, but this comment has barely been up for 1 minute and I'm already being down-voted. Surely no one can read something this long this fast and down-vote even faster. I've tried to write a reasoned critique of the phenomena before me. It's not a political comment, but a logical one.) Any constitution is a fine balance of power, a body like this which concentrates power outside of the constitution without carefully thought out checks and balances can be used to deliver the coup de grace to democracy. After all who guards the guards? This will be extremely unpopular over here, but the citizens of any nation are responsible for corruption. Their leaders aren't alien beings who have descended from planet Z to rule upon their country. They were and are chosen from amongst them, and in a representative democracy it is they who choose them. You might argue that the vote itself is an ineffective tool, and you will be right, but it does offer us the opportunity to ruthlessly edit people from power. At the end it is the culture of a country that shapes a leader to a great deal. They are simply mirrors of society, but we seem to run away from that fact. The same goes for bureaucrats and any other malaise that plagues society. They are from amongst us, and although the blame may be greater on some shoulders, it is borne by all of us. The inherent assumption is that the people in this organization will be somehow pure, sans biases, and without malice. It makes me doubt this because human nature being human nature, sooner or later someone creative is going to come along and will convince people to side with him/her and play this unbalanced system to achieve control. It's not a matter of if, but when. Of course, I might be wrong and this bill might be a carefully calculated with the calculus of power to be perfectly neutral, but I somehow doubt that given the sheer PR and the herd mentality that seems to surround this. For example the man portrayed as a Gandhian whipped drunks in his home town in the name of "social progress", how is that behavior Gandhian? (I'm not questioning if the behavior is right or wrong, I'm simply asking how can someone who whips people be called the modern Gandhi?) I think that something rather interesting is going on over here, and that the true nature of this bill and the organization it will create will be apparent as time passes on. I honestly hope that it's genuine, and it won't lead to a calculated attempt to gain power, but I wouldn't bet on it.
- ankeshk 15y ago
  There are checks and balances. The Lokpal will be supervised by the cabinet secretary and the election commission. Also, any case against a curropt Lokpal chairperson can be bought in court - and can be removed if found guilty. Its only independent of the government - who its supposed to keep a check on. The Lokpal bill was initially introduced in the Indian parliament in 1968. 43 years ago. Many attempts were made to make it into a law - always unsuccessfully. Until Anna Hazare whipped the people into a frenzy, went on a fast and essentially blackmailed the parliament. That is why he is called a modern day Gandhi. He successfully used Gandhian techniques to achieve an impossible feat. Not because of some checkered instance from his past. (Also, Gandhi recruited Indians to become soldiers during WW1 and fight for the British - going against his doctrine of non violence. No one is pure and nothing is black and white.)
blinkingled 15y ago
As rightly pointed out by Mr. Hazare this is only half the battle won. Part of the second battle should be simplifying the bureaucracy - paperwork, transparency, easily interpretable procedures that are available for general public and infrastructure to monitor the efficiency of the bureaucracy - how many cases people brought, what was the resolution time, why was it not resolved etc. Because the above are the main reasons general public becomes willing to be participate in corruption - the arcane, unclear, irrelevant processes that lead to confusion which the bureaucracy uses for their benefit. If they attack that issue and make the bureaucracy responsible and accountable that will go long way in reducing corruption and making the general public happier. That's the harder part though. Without it people will continue to suffer.
- vinutheraj 15y ago
  There will be corruption as long as there are people who want to make a quick buck without working hard. We can only try to reduce and discourage it. The problem in India is lack of development and education and poverty. As long as these issues are not addressed we will never touch the root of the problem, and will be just trying to treat the symptoms.
  - blinkingled 15y ago
    It's a complicated problem - you're right in pointing out that part of it is education and poverty / lack of opportunities for every class of people. But again the bureaucracy is part of the problem - Government's schemes, aid doesn't reach the poor etc. In that sense making the bureaucracy accountable, transparent is the first right step to resolve the other problems.
    - vinutheraj 15y ago
      Yes, that is right, we have to make things more transparent. The RTI was one act towards that goal. Though, this particular act in the current form is not the right path in my opinion. People elected into the Jan Lokpal will be no different from people elected into parliament. There is no foolproof way to prevent them from corrupted themselves.
sagarun 15y ago
For those who wanna know "Who is anna hazare?" https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Anna_Hazare https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Anna_Hazare
- 0xdeadc0de 15y ago
  Also http://www.punemirror.in/article/2/2010101220101012233239336854a4d16/Here-is-why-RTI-activist-could-not-fast-in-Anna-Hazare%92s-village.html http://www.punemirror.in/article/2/2010101220101012233239336...
architgupta 15y ago
This topic is going to be a fairly polarizing. NYT perspective - http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/28/world/asia/28india.html?_r=fb http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/28/world/asia/28india.html?_r... The fantastic part was the peaceful way in which the campaign ran. No violence, rioting, etc took place. Peaceful protests.
vinutheraj 15y ago
IF the act is going to be the same/similar to what is mentioned here - http://www.annahazare.org/pdf/Jan%20lokpal%20bill%20by%20Expert%20(Eng).pdf http://www.annahazare.org/pdf/Jan%20lokpal%20bill%20by%20Exp... then I will be very disappointed. Creating an extra-body which itself can act as the police and be outside of the parliament and be a concentration of power not elected by the democratic process would be the wrong way to go I feel. I feel the people have good intention behind coming up with this act, but that alone doesn't mean that this law is the right thing to do. We are trying to solve the symptom and not the disease. Corruption is just the symptom created by the way our society and culture functions, we will have to fix the root cause to fix corruption. I don't think increasing punitive measures is going to curb corruption in the big scale. Corruption as a whole is weaved into our social fabric. We would need a lot more than just a law to remove it.
goombastic 15y ago
For a country full of software engineers and business process engineers, India's pathetic bureaucracy has not been in any mood to modernize. Most modernization efforts have been to buy a couple of PCs load up Windows and wait for magic to somehow happen. It has not. Open accounting, transparent gvernance etc were supposed to have happened by now, they haven't. The bureaucracy is also extremely dismissive of anything industry suggests as a better way of doing things. Anything that devolves their ability to sit on approvals or wield power is shot down immediately. The existing bureaucracy is a waste of tax payer money and an example of redundant waste. Even Slovenia now has bench-marked, transparent and open accounting systems.
digamber_kamat 15y ago
I think this forum perhaps would understand best what is the real cause of corruption in India. In a place like Singapore an entrepreneur need to take around 7 permission to start construction, in India you need to take 30+. Is the way to reduce corruption is to bring a new inspector who will looks after all those 30+ permission processes or to reduce these permission to 5 ? Indian government employes 3 million employees out of which 1.4 million are employed purely by railways. Does it make sense for the Ombudman to appoint 7000 inspectors to look after Indian Railways corruption or Should the railways try to thin its staff by outsourcing most of it's processes? Does it make sense to waster tax-payer's money on an ombudsman inspector to look after corruption in a loss making government factory that manufactures soap ? (Yes, in India government runs soap companies). Or should it get rid of that factory itself ? If you want to start a hotel you need to take around 300 permissions our of which most needs to be renewed yearly. One permission for example is from the 'weights and measurements' department which certifies that all the weighing scales in your hotel are up-to the standards. No one bothers to get their scales checked they just send a packet of money to 'weights and measures' department and get permissions. The root cause of corruption in India is not in lack of some laws but the policies which government has put in deliberately to ensure that politicians are in position to control every aspect of it's people's life. In software terms I would say Indian government is a case of bad architectural layout. You have a zillion components tightly coupled with another zillion components which are affecting performance of the system. If someone wants to be efficient he has to hack the system. Adding another layer over this bad architecture does not solve any porblem, you need to fix the basic architecture first. Then talk about ombudsman.
- chakde 15y ago
  Have you seen this or not ? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CHcKlIsvAQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CHcKlIsvAQ It is not adding another layer, it is refactoring the system based on good evidence that this has worked before. People talking about real cause and root cause are welcome to start a movement to solve that. When you are able to convince a few friends and gather a few followers, please let us know.
  - digamber_kamat 15y ago
prpon 15y ago
For those of us who are not aware of lokpal or what the bill contains to reduce corruption in India, can someone provide a brief summary?
- digamber_kamat 15y ago
  Here is a critic of Lokpal Bill as proposed by Anna Hazare http://pragati.nationalinterest.in/2011/08/jan-lok-pal-is-both-unconstitutional-and-unnecessary/ http://pragati.nationalinterest.in/2011/08/jan-lok-pal-is-bo...
naughtysriram 15y ago
People wake up..!! There are two kinds of bribing/corruption. In most countries you will see officers take bribe for not doing something that comes in their authority or that is out of their authority. But only in Great India we can see that officers take bribe just for doing their job which they get paid for. Jan Lok Pal bill is the leash that the people of Great India have got to keep all the officers tied.
delinka 15y ago
I don't get how this is OK on HN but the articles on the "right to video police" are not. Isn't this article also politics?
bitops 15y ago
I'm going to admit my ignorance here...I understood very little of what this article said and what it's relevance is. I don't follow Indian politics, so I do not know very much about how the government works, what the Lokpal bill is, or what it's meant to do. Or who "Anna" is. Maybe somebody would be kind enough to post a tl;dr? I understand that there are problems with corruption in India but don't know any of the background details.
anon5 15y ago
We can at best hope that it is going to turn out well, in the end. Anna Hazare is being hastily compared to Gandhi. Before this he had good credentials, i.e. was fairly well known in India, but he was just one-among-many-equals (not even first among equals) of social activists. The positive though is that, the three most important people around him, also have got good credentials. Okay two at least (Kiran Bedi and Arvind Kejriwal). About the third - Mr. Bhushan - not much was known earlier. Arvind Kejriwal in particular had worked very hard in the activism space, being one of the key guys behind acts such as RTI. (It may interest the HN community more, that he happens to be a product of IIT in India - the most reputable tech institution over here. ) But this sudden burst of 'I-want-results-now' sort of hyper activism. Has left an admirer like me confused at best. Confused, as to whether the good guys indeed are still on the right track. Or have broken down. Broken down, akin to a website owner, who after years of toiling to build traffic the clean and hard way, have suddenly resorted to black hat SEO. (If the analogy is not obvious, I mean, just like dirty and unethical SEO, may be easy to build traffic. Similarly fast to death is an easy way to build frenzy. Not easy always, but easy once in a while, and this technique was being applied the first time in front of new TV media). And just being good people and having good intentions is not enough. You have to be a lot careful with these things. As they say 'With power comes more .....'. Want to recount an anecdote to make a point: Recently I had a reason to visit a village in northern India. I won't polish my words here - The experience was ugly. The village was very dirty. The people ultra lazy. Open drains all over the place smelling bad. People just sitting idle. Houses in the state of decay, but no body is working to rebuild them. Electricity comes only in the night, that of course is not their problem. My family and me had planned to stay for 2 days there. But had to rush back the same day, as I could not simply just get myself to use the dirty toilet there. (Call me whatever - snobbish, unfeeling, uncaring, etc. but I am being brutally honest here) So a thought occurred to me. That its not corruption-freedom they need now urgently. Its basic education (for their kids) and perhaps some inspiration (and some training also won't hurt) in life to get up from their haunches and start doing some work. I may sound like a right wing capitalist here. But that's just a label, and my anon status gives me the liberty to write freely. And BTW, in general I am left leaning for various things - have followed Paul Krugman's writings for past few years. And also, I am a big fan of the Mahatma Gandhi. (I needed to say this, to give my fellow Indians, a background of where I am coming from. So before even you start getting to abusing me, please at-least bother to understand me) On the matter of abuse, I feel sorry for Manmohan Singh our PM. People just don't have any broader perspective. And can just so easily be swayed from one side to another. Not long back - i.e. until about two years back - he was being hailed as a great person, who ushered India into liberalization of the 90s. Which allowed the GDP to become 8% from and liberated it from the Hindu growth rate of 3-4%. And allowed a great Indian middle class to emerge, etc. etc. But now, the very same people, are just after his blood all the time. I was almost fearing that the poor guy does not get a heart attack, from so much pressure, while every body else is worried about Anna's health (no disrespect to him either). Now on corruption: People don't even see the irony of what they are saying and supporting. In the past two years lots of scams have been uncovered - CWG & 2G-spectrum-allocation the most prominent of them. IMO two things that were most instrumental for the uncovering were: 1) The RTI (right to information) law passed only few years back and 2) the CAG reports. Powerful personalities went to jail (still are in jail) and many others still live in fear. So is that a good thing or a bad thing? Meaning, will people would have been better off if these were not uncovered or are people better off now that they are in fact uncovered. The least the uncovering of these scams tells, is that the system is working. So one would expect that people will work towards empowering the current set of things (laws/institutions) which have proven that they are very effective. And not indulge in hyper-activism, the outcome of which is at best unpredictable. Even enact more laws, who is stopping. But no sir. We want some more blood. And we want it now. So what, if the movement or agitation, call it whatever you like, shames India into looking like a Arab country. (Some lunatic journo, surely compared this with an 'Arab Spring' ... I almost heard him. ) Silent evolutionary things, are much more powerful, than a revolutionary change. The latter also can be helpful. But people leading them have to be sure. Really really sure. I honestly am still confused, at best. I still don't doubt the intentions of Kejriwal and Ms. Bedi. I hope they are guided well by their inner beings... And did I miss an Obama like orator, to articulate the government's perspective on things. EDIT: No disrespect to Arab countries either. My remark is only intended for the rulers (kings) of those countries, which have obviously been abusing the populace, who have now very bravely gathered the will to fight them.
vinodkd 15y ago
How is this HN-worthy? As an Indian, I'm deeply interested in what's happening here right now, but I fail to see how this is useful in this forum.

166 points by combiclickwise 15y ago

digamber_kamat 15y ago

Hardly any history. Matter of time this becomes another useless institution.

dimmuborgir 15y ago
Well it's not a constitutional body. So as long as it remains independent (most likely) it'll be lethal against corruption.
- asdkl234890 15y ago
  So as long as it remains totally independent (most likely) it'll be lethal against corruption. But what if someone tries to corrupt them? What makes them immune from corruption?
  - blinkingled 15y ago
    So you advocate genetically modified human beings to be created without the corruption gene to run an anti-corruption institution? Get off the high horses. It's all run by the people after all - you just hope to create a good balance of power and try to put better, educated people in places of power. There is no magic wand to suddenly rid of all malaise for you while you sit still and criticize. That's what the bill is trying to do.
    - cnu 15y ago
      In other words, you throw all kind of shit at the wall and see what sticks.
  - kartikrustagi 15y ago
    They can be corrupt, but then according to the proposed law every citizen will have a right to go to Supreme Court against the LokPal. This will surely be a deterrent.
    - vinutheraj 15y ago
      I don't think such deterrents are going to influence corruption. Does one decide not to harm someone, just because we have laws against it ? By the way, don't we already have laws against corruption, why hasn't this stopped anyone yet ? Are more laws going to stop it ?
  - dimmuborgir 15y ago
    A corrupt Lokpal can be removed within two months by the parliament.
    - vinutheraj 15y ago
      I think the constitution also has a process mentioned, on how to remove an MP, but that system is not working well. So how are you sure that this system will work. Why are we not urging them to fix the former system, instead of adding more.
      - dimmuborgir 15y ago
        Apart from cabinet secretary Lokpal is answerable to Election Commission which is autonomous. Along with this, the election process of a Lokpal itself will reduce chances of corruption.

evolution 15y ago

Surely it's going to be part of history. Besides there are being RTI and other laws, it was much needed. This bill will be independent and answerable to people not government. Hope it helps for good.

notanswerable 15y ago
Actually they are not answerable to anyone.
- ankeshk 15y ago
  Not true. They are answerable to the cabinet secretary and the election commission.
- dimmuborgir 15y ago
  That's the most common FUD being spread against Lokpal.

Garbage 15y ago

Please note that, the bill is not passed yet. It will go to committee and will be discussed in the parliament again.

dimmuborgir 15y ago
Since Standing Committee is not autonomous and since there's a strong political opportunism in giving support to this ombudsman bill, it'll most likely be passed without much difficulty.

GeneTraylor 15y ago

(note: I don't mean to be rude, but this comment has barely been up for 1 minute and I'm already being down-voted. Surely no one can read something this long this fast and down-vote even faster. I've tried to write a reasoned critique of the phenomena before me. It's not a political comment, but a logical one.) Any constitution is a fine balance of power, a body like this which concentrates power outside of the constitution without carefully thought out checks and balances can be used to deliver the coup de grace to democracy. After all who guards the guards? This will be extremely unpopular over here, but the citizens of any nation are responsible for corruption. Their leaders aren't alien beings who have descended from planet Z to rule upon their country. They were and are chosen from amongst them, and in a representative democracy it is they who choose them. You might argue that the vote itself is an ineffective tool, and you will be right, but it does offer us the opportunity to ruthlessly edit people from power. At the end it is the culture of a country that shapes a leader to a great deal. They are simply mirrors of society, but we seem to run away from that fact. The same goes for bureaucrats and any other malaise that plagues society. They are from amongst us, and although the blame may be greater on some shoulders, it is borne by all of us. The inherent assumption is that the people in this organization will be somehow pure, sans biases, and without malice. It makes me doubt this because human nature being human nature, sooner or later someone creative is going to come along and will convince people to side with him/her and play this unbalanced system to achieve control. It's not a matter of if, but when. Of course, I might be wrong and this bill might be a carefully calculated with the calculus of power to be perfectly neutral, but I somehow doubt that given the sheer PR and the herd mentality that seems to surround this. For example the man portrayed as a Gandhian whipped drunks in his home town in the name of "social progress", how is that behavior Gandhian? (I'm not questioning if the behavior is right or wrong, I'm simply asking how can someone who whips people be called the modern Gandhi?) I think that something rather interesting is going on over here, and that the true nature of this bill and the organization it will create will be apparent as time passes on. I honestly hope that it's genuine, and it won't lead to a calculated attempt to gain power, but I wouldn't bet on it.

ankeshk 15y ago
There are checks and balances. The Lokpal will be supervised by the cabinet secretary and the election commission. Also, any case against a curropt Lokpal chairperson can be bought in court - and can be removed if found guilty. Its only independent of the government - who its supposed to keep a check on. The Lokpal bill was initially introduced in the Indian parliament in 1968. 43 years ago. Many attempts were made to make it into a law - always unsuccessfully. Until Anna Hazare whipped the people into a frenzy, went on a fast and essentially blackmailed the parliament. That is why he is called a modern day Gandhi. He successfully used Gandhian techniques to achieve an impossible feat. Not because of some checkered instance from his past. (Also, Gandhi recruited Indians to become soldiers during WW1 and fight for the British - going against his doctrine of non violence. No one is pure and nothing is black and white.)

blinkingled 15y ago

As rightly pointed out by Mr. Hazare this is only half the battle won. Part of the second battle should be simplifying the bureaucracy - paperwork, transparency, easily interpretable procedures that are available for general public and infrastructure to monitor the efficiency of the bureaucracy - how many cases people brought, what was the resolution time, why was it not resolved etc. Because the above are the main reasons general public becomes willing to be participate in corruption - the arcane, unclear, irrelevant processes that lead to confusion which the bureaucracy uses for their benefit. If they attack that issue and make the bureaucracy responsible and accountable that will go long way in reducing corruption and making the general public happier. That's the harder part though. Without it people will continue to suffer.

vinutheraj 15y ago
There will be corruption as long as there are people who want to make a quick buck without working hard. We can only try to reduce and discourage it. The problem in India is lack of development and education and poverty. As long as these issues are not addressed we will never touch the root of the problem, and will be just trying to treat the symptoms.
- blinkingled 15y ago
  It's a complicated problem - you're right in pointing out that part of it is education and poverty / lack of opportunities for every class of people. But again the bureaucracy is part of the problem - Government's schemes, aid doesn't reach the poor etc. In that sense making the bureaucracy accountable, transparent is the first right step to resolve the other problems.
  - vinutheraj 15y ago
    Yes, that is right, we have to make things more transparent. The RTI was one act towards that goal. Though, this particular act in the current form is not the right path in my opinion. People elected into the Jan Lokpal will be no different from people elected into parliament. There is no foolproof way to prevent them from corrupted themselves.

sagarun 15y ago

For those who wanna know "Who is anna hazare?" https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Anna_Hazare https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Anna_Hazare

0xdeadc0de 15y ago
Also http://www.punemirror.in/article/2/2010101220101012233239336854a4d16/Here-is-why-RTI-activist-could-not-fast-in-Anna-Hazare%92s-village.html http://www.punemirror.in/article/2/2010101220101012233239336...

architgupta 15y ago

This topic is going to be a fairly polarizing. NYT perspective - http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/28/world/asia/28india.html?_r=fb http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/28/world/asia/28india.html?_r... The fantastic part was the peaceful way in which the campaign ran. No violence, rioting, etc took place. Peaceful protests.

vinutheraj 15y ago

IF the act is going to be the same/similar to what is mentioned here - http://www.annahazare.org/pdf/Jan%20lokpal%20bill%20by%20Expert%20(Eng).pdf http://www.annahazare.org/pdf/Jan%20lokpal%20bill%20by%20Exp... then I will be very disappointed. Creating an extra-body which itself can act as the police and be outside of the parliament and be a concentration of power not elected by the democratic process would be the wrong way to go I feel. I feel the people have good intention behind coming up with this act, but that alone doesn't mean that this law is the right thing to do. We are trying to solve the symptom and not the disease. Corruption is just the symptom created by the way our society and culture functions, we will have to fix the root cause to fix corruption. I don't think increasing punitive measures is going to curb corruption in the big scale. Corruption as a whole is weaved into our social fabric. We would need a lot more than just a law to remove it.

goombastic 15y ago

For a country full of software engineers and business process engineers, India's pathetic bureaucracy has not been in any mood to modernize. Most modernization efforts have been to buy a couple of PCs load up Windows and wait for magic to somehow happen. It has not. Open accounting, transparent gvernance etc were supposed to have happened by now, they haven't. The bureaucracy is also extremely dismissive of anything industry suggests as a better way of doing things. Anything that devolves their ability to sit on approvals or wield power is shot down immediately. The existing bureaucracy is a waste of tax payer money and an example of redundant waste. Even Slovenia now has bench-marked, transparent and open accounting systems.

digamber_kamat 15y ago

I think this forum perhaps would understand best what is the real cause of corruption in India. In a place like Singapore an entrepreneur need to take around 7 permission to start construction, in India you need to take 30+. Is the way to reduce corruption is to bring a new inspector who will looks after all those 30+ permission processes or to reduce these permission to 5 ? Indian government employes 3 million employees out of which 1.4 million are employed purely by railways. Does it make sense for the Ombudman to appoint 7000 inspectors to look after Indian Railways corruption or Should the railways try to thin its staff by outsourcing most of it's processes? Does it make sense to waster tax-payer's money on an ombudsman inspector to look after corruption in a loss making government factory that manufactures soap ? (Yes, in India government runs soap companies). Or should it get rid of that factory itself ? If you want to start a hotel you need to take around 300 permissions our of which most needs to be renewed yearly. One permission for example is from the 'weights and measurements' department which certifies that all the weighing scales in your hotel are up-to the standards. No one bothers to get their scales checked they just send a packet of money to 'weights and measures' department and get permissions. The root cause of corruption in India is not in lack of some laws but the policies which government has put in deliberately to ensure that politicians are in position to control every aspect of it's people's life. In software terms I would say Indian government is a case of bad architectural layout. You have a zillion components tightly coupled with another zillion components which are affecting performance of the system. If someone wants to be efficient he has to hack the system. Adding another layer over this bad architecture does not solve any porblem, you need to fix the basic architecture first. Then talk about ombudsman.

chakde 15y ago
Have you seen this or not ? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CHcKlIsvAQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CHcKlIsvAQ It is not adding another layer, it is refactoring the system based on good evidence that this has worked before. People talking about real cause and root cause are welcome to start a movement to solve that. When you are able to convince a few friends and gather a few followers, please let us know.
- digamber_kamat 15y ago

prpon 15y ago

For those of us who are not aware of lokpal or what the bill contains to reduce corruption in India, can someone provide a brief summary?

digamber_kamat 15y ago
Here is a critic of Lokpal Bill as proposed by Anna Hazare http://pragati.nationalinterest.in/2011/08/jan-lok-pal-is-both-unconstitutional-and-unnecessary/ http://pragati.nationalinterest.in/2011/08/jan-lok-pal-is-bo...

naughtysriram 15y ago

People wake up..!! There are two kinds of bribing/corruption. In most countries you will see officers take bribe for not doing something that comes in their authority or that is out of their authority. But only in Great India we can see that officers take bribe just for doing their job which they get paid for. Jan Lok Pal bill is the leash that the people of Great India have got to keep all the officers tied.

delinka 15y ago

I don't get how this is OK on HN but the articles on the "right to video police" are not. Isn't this article also politics?

bitops 15y ago

I'm going to admit my ignorance here...I understood very little of what this article said and what it's relevance is. I don't follow Indian politics, so I do not know very much about how the government works, what the Lokpal bill is, or what it's meant to do. Or who "Anna" is. Maybe somebody would be kind enough to post a tl;dr? I understand that there are problems with corruption in India but don't know any of the background details.

anon5 15y ago

We can at best hope that it is going to turn out well, in the end. Anna Hazare is being hastily compared to Gandhi. Before this he had good credentials, i.e. was fairly well known in India, but he was just one-among-many-equals (not even first among equals) of social activists. The positive though is that, the three most important people around him, also have got good credentials. Okay two at least (Kiran Bedi and Arvind Kejriwal). About the third - Mr. Bhushan - not much was known earlier. Arvind Kejriwal in particular had worked very hard in the activism space, being one of the key guys behind acts such as RTI. (It may interest the HN community more, that he happens to be a product of IIT in India - the most reputable tech institution over here. ) But this sudden burst of 'I-want-results-now' sort of hyper activism. Has left an admirer like me confused at best. Confused, as to whether the good guys indeed are still on the right track. Or have broken down. Broken down, akin to a website owner, who after years of toiling to build traffic the clean and hard way, have suddenly resorted to black hat SEO. (If the analogy is not obvious, I mean, just like dirty and unethical SEO, may be easy to build traffic. Similarly fast to death is an easy way to build frenzy. Not easy always, but easy once in a while, and this technique was being applied the first time in front of new TV media). And just being good people and having good intentions is not enough. You have to be a lot careful with these things. As they say 'With power comes more .....'. Want to recount an anecdote to make a point: Recently I had a reason to visit a village in northern India. I won't polish my words here - The experience was ugly. The village was very dirty. The people ultra lazy. Open drains all over the place smelling bad. People just sitting idle. Houses in the state of decay, but no body is working to rebuild them. Electricity comes only in the night, that of course is not their problem. My family and me had planned to stay for 2 days there. But had to rush back the same day, as I could not simply just get myself to use the dirty toilet there. (Call me whatever - snobbish, unfeeling, uncaring, etc. but I am being brutally honest here) So a thought occurred to me. That its not corruption-freedom they need now urgently. Its basic education (for their kids) and perhaps some inspiration (and some training also won't hurt) in life to get up from their haunches and start doing some work. I may sound like a right wing capitalist here. But that's just a label, and my anon status gives me the liberty to write freely. And BTW, in general I am left leaning for various things - have followed Paul Krugman's writings for past few years. And also, I am a big fan of the Mahatma Gandhi. (I needed to say this, to give my fellow Indians, a background of where I am coming from. So before even you start getting to abusing me, please at-least bother to understand me) On the matter of abuse, I feel sorry for Manmohan Singh our PM. People just don't have any broader perspective. And can just so easily be swayed from one side to another. Not long back - i.e. until about two years back - he was being hailed as a great person, who ushered India into liberalization of the 90s. Which allowed the GDP to become 8% from and liberated it from the Hindu growth rate of 3-4%. And allowed a great Indian middle class to emerge, etc. etc. But now, the very same people, are just after his blood all the time. I was almost fearing that the poor guy does not get a heart attack, from so much pressure, while every body else is worried about Anna's health (no disrespect to him either). Now on corruption: People don't even see the irony of what they are saying and supporting. In the past two years lots of scams have been uncovered - CWG & 2G-spectrum-allocation the most prominent of them. IMO two things that were most instrumental for the uncovering were: 1) The RTI (right to information) law passed only few years back and 2) the CAG reports. Powerful personalities went to jail (still are in jail) and many others still live in fear. So is that a good thing or a bad thing? Meaning, will people would have been better off if these were not uncovered or are people better off now that they are in fact uncovered. The least the uncovering of these scams tells, is that the system is working. So one would expect that people will work towards empowering the current set of things (laws/institutions) which have proven that they are very effective. And not indulge in hyper-activism, the outcome of which is at best unpredictable. Even enact more laws, who is stopping. But no sir. We want some more blood. And we want it now. So what, if the movement or agitation, call it whatever you like, shames India into looking like a Arab country. (Some lunatic journo, surely compared this with an 'Arab Spring' ... I almost heard him. ) Silent evolutionary things, are much more powerful, than a revolutionary change. The latter also can be helpful. But people leading them have to be sure. Really really sure. I honestly am still confused, at best. I still don't doubt the intentions of Kejriwal and Ms. Bedi. I hope they are guided well by their inner beings... And did I miss an Obama like orator, to articulate the government's perspective on things. EDIT: No disrespect to Arab countries either. My remark is only intended for the rulers (kings) of those countries, which have obviously been abusing the populace, who have now very bravely gathered the will to fight them.

vinodkd 15y ago

How is this HN-worthy? As an Indian, I'm deeply interested in what's happening here right now, but I fail to see how this is useful in this forum.