The Indian Patriot: Bahut Confusun hai Bhai

To date my family thought I was jumping up and down making a big fuss about nothing and life would go on as per the system. Yesterday when I finally managed to explain to them what all the fuss around Anna Hazare was about, they were shocked and have decided to join me in my fight.

They then insisted that I write about the issue immediately since loads of other people may also be confused about the core issues we are fighting for.

Let me first start with dispelling the myth that the Govt has suddenly woken up to the fact that Corruption is a cancer and the scams that are boiling out of the gutters of the Indian government machinery are now starting to stink.

The fact is that India has signed the United Nations Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC) which is designed to make its member countries bring in legislation against corruption to end it effectively. 140 countries have signed this convention.

In order to meet with the terms of this convention, India had no choice but o come up with something which showed an eyewash that it was trying to stem corruption in India. They therefore came up with something called a Lok Pal Bill.

When the educated people heard about this Bill this was a slap in our face since not only did it not do anything to prevent corruption, it was designed to aid it and that too very blatantly. Some “civil society” thinkers got together and asked the public for their suggestions on this joke of a Bill. Thousands of suggestions came in via the internet and there were compiled into a new draft Bill called the Jan Lok Pal Bill which was framed along the format of the Govt Lok Pal Bill, but had plugged all the loopholes.

Which loopholes were there to help corruption in the Govt draft, you ask, let me cover the salient points quickly.

The first and most scary provision of the Govt draft for my family and all of us Indian citizens is:

If a citizen complains against a “babu”. The Babu has a right to file a counter complaint against his accuser in court. If the accuser fails to prove the “babu” is corrupt, he can be jailed for 2 years. ( this means when you accuse a babu , you will have the onus of proving him corrupt and if you dont you get 2 years jail).

The tragically hilarious part is if you do manage to prove him corrupt his max sentence is 6 months. The fail nail, to ensure that no-one ever has the guts to complain is that the “babu” gets a Govt appointed attorney FREE, while you need to pay for your own defence.

The second scary part is something called the preliminary investigation:

As per he Govt draft, if a “babu” is accused of a misdeed, lets say I complain that there is a particular person looking the other way in Olympic Committee in return for 200-300 Cr that he has accumulated. The LokPal has to call that person in and present ALL the evidence he has collected to the accused.

The accused then has a right to explain his defence, which may take a few days. This means that even before the Lokpal can do a CBI style raid and catch the accused offguard, the accused has 2-3 days to make sure the evidence is wiped clean. This is a travesty of justice. Nowhere in the world does an investigative agency have to show all the evidence to an accused BEFORE even a trial starts.

The Third part is that Govt draft covers only A class officers of the Govt service. Not B, C & D class. The reason given by the Govt is that there aren’t enough officers to control so many cases of corruption which would come up if all these officers were included. ( Indirectly they are agreeing that too may B, C & D officers are corrupt to the core).

However, this manpower shortage has not stopped them from including all NGOs REGISTERED OR UNREGISTERED from being under the purview of the Lok Pal. THIS IS DANGEROUS, this means that even your housing society is under the Lok Pal.The deceit is obvious in just this one move if nothing else.

Without all the Govt officers of all classes as well as the PM & MPs and all other parts of the bureaucracy, etc being under the purview, the bill is toothless and scams such as 2G, CWG, Reddy mining, etc are all untouchable. Scams such as Public Distribution scheme Ghotala, Medicine in Hospitals diversion, Misuse of funds in PWD and Punchayats will be non pursuable.

Corruption is a crime even today under the Prevention of Corruption Act, But according to the Govt’s skewed logic because there are too many offenders if we include all classes of Govt officers, so we should overlook certain crimes. This infers that if tomorrow we get too many rapes, we will have to allow rapists of only one particular type of rape to be arrested since they are too many criminals to arrest all types of rapes.

Right now we know that certain elements in the CBI, do bow and scrape to the Govt which is why people like Quatrocchi and Hassan Ali live charmed lives. One more bone of contention lies with the fact that the Govt version of the Lok Pal Bill allows for a 9 member committee. 5 of which will be Govt appointees such as MPs etc. The others will be people like the serving CVC who will be indirectly behoved to the Govt., this means that the govt will control the lokpal by proxy like they do the CBI.

Once you put all this in place , post Govt version of Lok Pal Bill, we have a state where a babu from “A” category service cannot be raided without him coming to know in advance, who can then file a case against his accuser FREE and get him jailed for 2 years.

Kya India se corruption kabhi jayega if this happens ????

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Krishna to Arjun at Kurkshetra:

yada yada hi dharmasya glanir bhavati bharata
abhyutthanam adharmasya tadatmanam srjamy aham

Translation: O Descendant of Bharata! Whenever there is a degradation of religion and righteousness and surge in irreligion and unrighteousness, at that time I manifest Myself.

The days of depending upon Krishnas has gone. Today each one of us is a Krishna and each of us is an Arjun. The shankhs are sounding, time has come to pick up the reins and enter the battle field.

Program for this week unless the Govt tries any stunts over the weekend:

on 15th Aug 2011: 7 PM – Press conference by Anna Hazare on TV addressing the nation in a call for action