Sniping at anti-corruption crusaders will not save Congress Party

A sustained campaign of sniping at the leaders of the anti-corruption movement by senior members of the Congress Party, speaks of policy confusion and lack of leadership. What is it designed to achieve?

Kejrival, Anna Hazare, Kiran Bedi & Swami Agnivesh
Who will guard the guards?

Two members of Anna Hazare's campaign team were found to be guilty of fiddling expenses (Kiran Bedi) and diverting donations (Arvind Kejriwal). That gave the Congress Party opportunity to ridicule the anti-corruption campaigners. 

Civil rights lawyer Prashant Bhushan, another key member, suggested that the people of Kashmir should decide whether they wished to stay in India, be independent or switch to Pakistan. That is a 'sacred-cow' issue with most Indians. He was assaulted in his office by thugs believed to be members of an extreme Hindu fundamentalist organization.


Team Anna are on the back-foot and divided. That does not absolve the Congress Party of corruption in government. A corrupt government smearing anti-corruption campaigners does not win sympathy from a public fed-up with civil servants and politicians who abuse their positions. 

Bhushan attacked 
by goons

My hands are clean

The weak Manmohan Singh, out-manoeuvred by powerful political warlords, signals administrative dysfunction to voters. 


There is no one in the driver's seat. This is a lame-duck government which will be turfed out at the next general election.


Corruption works for everyone except the dispossessed


The victims of India's systemic corruption are the powerless masses who can't get relief from policemen, government clerks or elected representatives. 


The middle classes are annoyed that they have to grease palms at every turn. The rich leverage it to bend the system to their benefit. 


State legislators and parliamentarians see it as their ticket to amassing wealth by exerting influence on government contracts. Corruption works for everyone except the dispossessed.


What incentive for Parliament to pass Jan Lokpal Bill?


None. About 25% of sitting parliamentarians are convicted of crimes or pending charges. A larger proportion manage to pilfer without legal trace. More than US$1.4 trillion of India's 'black money' is stashed in Swiss Banks. Up to 40% of India's GDP is estimated to disappear from the economy into the pockets of civil servants, politicians and colluding businessmen. 


The last thing India's political class wants is public scrutiny of its methods of enrichment from public finances.


Thanks to the Right to Information Act (RTI) which was forced on the government in 2005 by an earlier public campaign, activists can request sight of documents, memos and contracts which were previously inaccessible. That data can be quickly distributed through social networks to name and shame the guilty. The politicians deeply regret passing the RTI Act.


Prime Minister Manmohan Singh recently floated a trial balloon saying the RTI needs to be reviewed as it inhibits civil servants from appending notes and comments to proposed Bills and projects. It slows down the normal functioning of government. That brought a torrent of protest from social activists, amply magnified through TV talk shows and press commentary.


Taking lessons from the effect of the RTI Act, the political class has no incentive to rush passage of the Jan Lokpal Bill lobbied by activist Anna Hazare. It is a severe tool designed to rid India of its Neta-Babu (politician-bureaucrat) nexus through swift justice meted out by a citizen's Ombudsman and his avenging angels. 


It gives corrupt judges, ministers, civil servants and legislators little legal privilege. It is punitive and extreme to a political class used to distorting legal process to escape responsibility.


Hazare warns Congress Party of election risk


Anna Hazare has warned that if a strong Jan Lokpal Bill is not passed into law by the Winter session of parliament, he will tour all the states where by-elections are due and re-ignite public anger against Congress Party candidates. That is no idle threat. 


The public fury that was triggered across the nation by Anna Hazare's fast in August has not gone away. India's voters are restive. And the game has gone well past the stage for the  government to invoke security as a cover to lock him up.


Congress Party strategists are toying with parliamentary process and legal punditry to water down the Lokpal Bill and starve budget allocations for the ambitious central and state anti-corruption machinery. 


By a clever combination of toothless legislation and budgetary under-provision, politicians of all parties hope to escape dismissal, seizure of assets and jail.


What is the point of getting elected if you cannot leverage your position to become a millionaire?


ENDS

Congress in disarray. Rahul damaged. Sonia returns to fix mess

Sonia Gandhi's dilemmas


The president of the Congress Party had to be rushed to New York for emergency cancer surgery. Sonia Gandhi's absence during the Hazare public protest and nation-wide outrage, led to confusion and back-tracking by the government.


She is back now and supposed to be recuperating. But she has to restore order within Congress and the government. Both retreated in public humiliation after bungling the Hazare protest.


The iron lady has to deal with the following challenges: How to fashion a Lokpal Bill which will have sufficient teeth to chill elected crooks but not allow mob justice? What happens if it results in full scale investigations of Congress politicians? What if Hazare resumes his public fast as he has threatened to do, if his version of the Lokpal Bill is not passed into law? 


Can she still steer Rahul to the prime ministership? He has lost stature after failing to connect with the agitated youth who came out in force to support Anna Hazare. Who else is there with credibility to lead Congress and the government? What about the next election? Is Congress not guaranteed to be turfed out already? After Sonia who?


All too much for one just recovering from cancer surgery.



Government in retreat


Both the Indian government and its Congress Party leadership failed to read the deep public resentment against the corrupt political class. They arrested the 74 year old Anna Hazare and his small band of followers. That catapulted him into the national consciousness and fanned public outrage. 


Then the country's shrill TV stations turned him into a celebrity with 24-hour coverage and panel punditry. Then twitterati and facebook activists spread viral messages of a corrupt power structure victimizing an old man who dared to protest. 


Then the government spin masters falsely accused Hazare and his team of tax evasion, corrupt land deals and more. He challenged them to charge him.


That jolted the urban middle class, NGOs, youth and the unemployed to join the rising public outcry. They found ready targets in the morally bankrupt Congress-led government beset with massive unresolved scandals. 


The police were instructed to release him with conditions attached. Hazare ignored all the conditions and started a public fast at the Ramlila Maidan in the national capital.


Hazare campaign professionally media-managed


Hazare's campaign managers were seasoned media minds and legal experts. They turned him into the second coming of Mahatma Gandhi. Hazare launched a 'second revolution' to rid the nation of what he called the new oppressors of the people. 


The blow-up poster of Gandhi dominated the raised dais on which the frail Hazare undertook his fast. The revered Mahatma and Hazare were linked in TV images beamed to the nation. 


T-shirts, Gandhi caps, dancing performances, Bollywood stars and pop-songs entertained the crowds. It turned into a national carnival with peaceful mass protests in several cities across the country.


The Anna Hazare team lobbied for the 'Jan Lokpal' Bill to replace the 'toothless' government version. 


Prime minister Manmohan Singh capitulated with the full support of the Opposition benches, on the 12th day of Hazare's fast, fearing his death on stage would unleash mob rampage against Parliament and all its representatives. Manmohan Singh agreed in principle to accept all his demands. 


The government bought time by passing his Bill to the house standing committee to vet along with other submissions. Now Sonia Gandhi has to craft a formula to reconcile the extreme positions on the Lokpal Bill.


'Jan Lokpal' challenges Congress, Govt. & Opposition


Hazare's Citizens' Ombudsman Bill (Jan Lokpal) seeks to set up an independent bureaucracy to vet public complaints against state legislators and members of parliament, police, judges, ministers and prime minister. No one is exempt. Fast justice is to be meted out. The guilty would be imprisoned and their assets seized.


There is no separation of powers between investigation, prosecution and sentencing. The administration of the Jan Lokpal as Hazare envisages it, is a law unto itself. It answers to no one. There are no external checks and balances. There is no independent appeal process. Who will guard the guards is unanswered.


The mischief of the political class aside, there is every danger of this supra-government, moralistic crusade degenerating quickly into vendettas, revenge, false accusations and witch hunts on a national scale. Revolutions and jihads throughout history have shown how power unchecked turns into mass abuse.


The Congress Party finds itself on the wrong side of the debate. It has projected itself as willing to use heavy boots to stop the people's call for clean government. It has been forced into the losing position of seeming to protect privilege and corrupt practices. Perception is everything in politics. Congress is unlikely to be voted back into office.


Rahul Gandhi stumbles


In the leadership vacuum left by Sonia Gandhi's emergency cancer surgery in New York, Rahul Gandhi was presented with a golden opportunity to rise to the occasion. He failed to seize the moment. 


Worse, he recited a wooden, flat script in Parliament warning the movement against usurping the role of elected lawmakers. Instead of co-opting the national anger against corruption and the intransigence of the 'old politics', he aligned himself with the Old Guard. He became part of the problem. 


The educated youth who form a growing demographic voting block in India, cannot any longer look to Rahul Gandhi for inspiration. He failed them at the most crucial moment. The youth turned to leadership of a 74-year anti-corruption crusader.





ENDS

Sonia Gandhi is unwell. Wikileaks to divulge Indians' Swiss Bank Accounts

The dynastic Nehru-Gandhi clan and Congress have a long history of shady deals and sullied reputations. Anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare's railings against the venal Indian political class have sparked a nationwide call for their roasting. 

Hazare demands a Lokpal Bill with teeth

A very tough Jan Lokpal Bill has been thrown at the parliamentarians to enact into law. The politicians and bureaucrats have been told to agree to be hunted, exposed, cast out, whipped and their ill-begotten assets seized.


It is retribution of the long-suffering Indian middle and lower classes, against the arrogant nexus of politicians, babus and businessmen, who have long misappropriated power and wealth with no accountability.


That whirlwind of anger and disgust plus calls for swift exposure and punishment of wrongdoers, has spooked all politicians.


Congress Party scandals galore


The Congress Party currently in government, is particularly vexed. It is still quagmired in the massive 2G spectrum auction scandal (est. to have cost the Exchequer US$40billion in lost revenues) and the 2010 Commonwealth Games fiasco.


The Bofors scandal of 1984 cost Rajiv Gandhi's Congress government the 1989 election. His own finance minister V P Singh, discovered the pay-offs by the Swedish arms supplier via Italian Ottavio Quattrocchi, a Sonia crony. V P Singh was dismissed from office and later expelled from the party.


Sonia Gandhi has an iron grip on the financial levers of the Congress Party. It explains her unchallenged command over party policy and ability to influence lucrative State and Federal appointments for favoured nominees - from behind the curtain, away from public scrutiny. That magnifies her effective hold on the Congress Party and by extension, national politics.



In 1992, former Izvestia journalist and later Harvard Nieman Fellow, Yevgenia Albats, cited KGB files about payments to Rajiv Gandhi and his family. KGB chief Victor Chebrikov sought authorization in writing to funnel US dollar payments to Sonia Gandhi, son Rahul Gandhi and mother Paola Maino (!) from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in Dec 1985.


Wikileaks disclosure may be the last straw

The Swiss Banking Association Report (2006) revealed that India has more black money (USD 1.4 trillion) stashed there than the rest of the world combined. Indian-owned Swiss Bank account assets were calculated to be 13 times the country's national debt!


Sonia Gandhi is not well. On 4th August she required "urgent surgery for an undisclosed medical condition" at New York's Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) which is the world's oldest and largest private cancer centre.


Wikileaks has announced that it has details of names and accounts of Indian holdings in Swiss Banks. That could tumble out any day. How that will add to the seething public rage across India is any body's guess.


ENDS

Indian Parliament Stalls Anti-Corruption Bill 42 years!

Is that a surprise when 25% of MP's face criminal charges? And the rest have yet to be caught? 

It was in 1963 that 31-year old independent MP Dr L M Singhvi first called for an independent Ombudsman to check abuses of power. Then prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru asked in jest of the young Singhvi: 

"To what zoo does this animal belong? Dr Singhvi you must indigenize it."

L M Singhvi then coined the Sanskrit terms Lokpal ('Protector of the People') and Lokayukt for the Ombudsman and state-level watchdogs. He lobbied vigorously for adoption of a Lokpal Bill from 1963-67.

As an independent without a party machinery behind him, he failed to muster support. He continued to champion it after he left parliament. 

In 1969 home minister Y B Chavan moved for the Bill and it was passed in the Lok Sabha (House of the People) but parliament was dissolved before it could be ratified in the Rajya Sabha (Council of the States) to become law.

The Lokpal Bill continued to be raised fitfully in 1971, 1977, 1985, 1989, 1996, 1998, 2001, 2005 and 2008 under successive governments but failed to win favour with the majority of MPs.

Beneficiaries of corruption have little incentive to change the status quo. The Washington Post in 2008 reported that nearly 25% of the 540 sitting members of parliament faced criminal charges "including human trafficking, immigration rackets, embezzlement, rape and even murder."

Anna Hazare's distrust of parliament even as he agreed to end his fast on 28 August of 288 hours, made him insist that the Lokpal Bill be debated immediately and passed into law during the current monsoon session of both houses. He warned the government that he would resume his fast if it failed to incorporate his terms or stalled the process.

Given the task of studying the many submissions for the Lokpal Bill from NGOs, citizens' groups and government agencies, it is unlikely that the Standing Committee can conclude its work in haste.

    Poetic Justice or Supreme Irony? 

The head of the Standing Committee on Law and Justice is Abhishek Manu Singhvi, son of anti-corruption activist Dr L M Singhvi who lobbied unsuccessfully for an Ombudsman Bill back in 1963. 

Expectations are high that Abhishek Singhvi will do a thorough job to complete what his father could not. This time there is an outraged and vigilant civil society behind the Bill.

Like Jawaharlal Nehru, prime minister Dr Manmohan Singh is respected for his integrity - but reviled for failing to exorcise a deeply corrupt Congress Party machinery.

      ENDS