Tuesday 5 April 2011

Anna Hazare On Fast To Press On Lokpal Bill


Veteran social activist, Anna Hazare reported to have began his fast unto death from today, April 5 2011, to press demand on the Lokpal bill.  I greatly admire his fight against corruption and wish all the best to him and to his movement.

However here are some of my thoughts. I am sure he will not die from the fast. Sooner or later the authorities come and negotiate a compromise on ending it, if not they will arrest and force feed him. It would be a miracle if the Government immediately agrees to the Jan Lokpal demand. However it may eventually agree to it if the public pressure mounts.

Suppose the Bill gets sanctioned still the corruption in this country will continue more or less as much as today (if not more) without any significant change. First of all there will be political pressure, corruption in the selection of the Lokpal committee members no matter what transparency they propose to bring in, mainly because  the root-cause or the monetary structure that facilitate corruption in the system still remain intact. Nevertheless I agree at least some anti corruption measures are better than having nothing. Of course more stringent punishment may deter some people from engaging in such corruption but we know the crime statistics reveal it would not reduce the crimes any significantly as long as its root-causes remain and there will be more chances of miscarriages of justice given the poor resources available in the hands of the justice system.

However my biggest concern is, the volume of corruption reported in the country is not even the Tip of an Iceberg. Considering the Indian populating around more than one billion so on a conservative estimate perhaps there are more than 100 million (10%) corruption cases(basically illicit money transactions) small or big, occur in every day (365 days in a year)  in which not even 0.1% (100,000)of  these cases get reported on a given day, in which not even 0.1% go to the court  out of which perhaps less than 1%  get convicted which  is something 0.0000001%  in total, nothing significant even by such a great Jan Lokpal Bill.

The most important fact of law prosecution of  corruption,  say bribery is far less compared to other such economic crimes like stealing or  robbery. A criminal  may rob10 houses on a given period before being caught. By the evidence found on his possession and other things the police make him to talk extract confession thus further collect  concrete evidences of most of his previous robbery and he will be prosecuted on all those robbery accounts. However a bureaucrat  may have taken bribe thousands of times on average before getting caught red handed on the last but it is mostly impossible for the police to collect any concrete evidence of his  all previous  bribe taking crime accounts. So he will be prosecuted only on the last and mostly set free as he got lots of  corruption money to fight it out in the court of Justice!

Unless we have a monetary system, which keeps  all money transaction records of every person  so when any person accused of corruption it can provide the concrete evidence for or against that person when its public or legal investigation ordered, there will be no end for  corruption.

I commend Anna Hazare and his team for bringing-in the Jan Lokpal bill it is a milestone  in our countries long  fight against corruption.


Valerian Texeira.
My Other Blogsites:

IT To Root-out Corruption
Drunk Driving DUI Root Cause
Alcoholics Cure well



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