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(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 th

(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.)
rushabh 15y ago
Totally agree. It seems like a media driven phenomenon. Incompetence is a bigger problem than corruption in India. The systemic problems that face the society need ambition, will and technology. This solution is too simplistic for me to be taken seriously.
- anonri 15y ago
  > Incompetence is a bigger problem than corruption in India. The systemic problems that face the society need ambition, will and technology. This is the elephant in the room when it comes to India. There is just a huge amount of apathy amongst the people. A simple example is how much produce rots to waste as a result of poor transportation/refrigeration. There are so many processes crying out to be optimized. As a US-born NRI, there are so many things that I find appalling that my family in India doesn't even notice. It's like they've been desensitized to all of these issues over the years to the point where they're not even really considered problems. A lot of people believe the difference between India and China is that China's autocratic government allows them to modernize and improve their country much faster, but the truth is that democracy can be compatible with rapid modernization if the people are willing to work together. Even in China, the government is ruled by a large number of people - no one would say that Hu Jintao has a level of power even close to that of a dictator. The real difference is that the Chinese government has labored long and hard to improve living conditions for hundreds of millions of its citizens (though it has also brutally mistreated several million of them) while the Indian government has been sitting around twiddling its fingers.

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.)

rushabh 15y ago

Totally agree. It seems like a media driven phenomenon. Incompetence is a bigger problem than corruption in India. The systemic problems that face the society need ambition, will and technology. This solution is too simplistic for me to be taken seriously.

anonri 15y ago
> Incompetence is a bigger problem than corruption in India. The systemic problems that face the society need ambition, will and technology. This is the elephant in the room when it comes to India. There is just a huge amount of apathy amongst the people. A simple example is how much produce rots to waste as a result of poor transportation/refrigeration. There are so many processes crying out to be optimized. As a US-born NRI, there are so many things that I find appalling that my family in India doesn't even notice. It's like they've been desensitized to all of these issues over the years to the point where they're not even really considered problems. A lot of people believe the difference between India and China is that China's autocratic government allows them to modernize and improve their country much faster, but the truth is that democracy can be compatible with rapid modernization if the people are willing to work together. Even in China, the government is ruled by a large number of people - no one would say that Hu Jintao has a level of power even close to that of a dictator. The real difference is that the Chinese government has labored long and hard to improve living conditions for hundreds of millions of its citizens (though it has also brutally mistreated several million of them) while the Indian government has been sitting around twiddling its fingers.