It is one of the saddest days for Indian democracy, the master plan of Indian Government has succeeded as the Lokpal bill has been deferred till next session. In the end, the whole nation seems to be dumbstruck with the betrayal of their leaders. I don’t know what is the purpose of the whole exercise, still the dream of strong and effective Lokpal seems to be impossible in current political mechanism. In last 48 hours, the political community has made the mockery of Indian democracy. Sadly this bill has gone back to cold storage where it has been lying for the last four decades. It is really shocking to see how shamelessly and blatantly our so called elected government completely failed to create strong Lokpal.
My point is, it never tried to create strong Lokpal, rather it tried to create Jokpal, which was, thank God, rejected by the stronger opposition. Now it has become clear that the politicians will never allow a mechanism like Lokpal that can eradicate corruption. Our politicians have proved that they would fight tooth and nail to block the passage of this bill. Can a thief support a law that will facilitate his arrest and downfall?
I have full sympathy with Anna Hazare, the honest old man who tried his level best to galvanize this sleeping nation against the corrupt Government. How many of us heard of Lokpal a year ago? It was Anna Hazare, who made the entire nation wake up and made our politicians feel that they were being watched and accountable to 1.2 billion Indians.
The UPA Government intentionally put these three features in the bill to facilitate its failure; 1. The proposed bill infringed upon the federal structure of our constitution. 2. The Government added the word “minority” in eleventh hour to create confusion. 3. Neither CBI was not allowed to work under Lokpal nor Lokpal was given an independent agency. The decision of keeping the Central Bureau of Investigation out of the Lokpal questioned the Government’s intentions behind this bill. We have a track record of CBI blindly following the orders of incumbent central Government so I don’t think there is any justifiable reason to keep CBI out of the purview of Lokpal. The Government knows very well that if C.B.I is made autonomous there is great chance of their ministers to be put behind bars. Also the inclusion of minorities among the groups given reservation in the nine-member body is bound to be challenged in the Supreme court on the ground that it amounts to a quota on the basis of religion. All these clearly shows the lack of will to fight against corruption.
So now the question is who is responsible behind this entire episode? Yes, we, the people of India, are responsible for everything happened in parliament in last 48 hours. We only selected these politicians so we have to suffer the pain of the wrong decisions and corruption dished out by them. After a few hours, we will forget everything and get ourselves busy in new year celebrations. In similar fashion, we forgot CWG scam, 2G scam, housing frauds. We have developed the habit of taking these things as practical realities of life.