One Activist’s Hunger Strike Cows Indian Government on Corruption

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Indians seem to have poured all their collective anger over corruption in government and the bureaucracy into a 71-year old social activist named Anna Hazare. He started a “fast unto death” on April 5, vowing to sacrifice himself unless the Indian government passed a law creating a “Lokpal,” an ombudsman body with the power to investigate any public official, including the Prime Minister. At first, it seemed like any other protest organized around Jantar Mantar, where just about all the capital’s million mutinies gather. Even the dramatic “fast unto death” has become just another bit of convenient political theater. (The south Indian politician Karunanidhi once undertook a “fast unto death” to protest the harsh treatment of Tamils in Sri Lanka’s civil war, but his protest lasted only a few hours. “Fast unto lunch”?)

But Hazare’s protest was different. He mobilized thousands of people in similar protests all over the country, with the help of frenzied television news coverage championing his cause. The populist Times Now channel even helpfully told viewers where to gather in different cities. On April 7, the former agriculture minister Sharad Pawar stepped down from a committee on corruption after Hazare criticized him as corrupt; by April 9, the government agreed to his demand for a committee to draft the Lokpal bill. Over the last few days, Indians seem energized by the whole thing. Here was someone channeling their anger against corruption and actually getting things done. Hazare, and the people, seemed to have won. He has now set a deadline of Aug. 15, 2011 – Indian independence day – for Parliament to pass the bill.

An innovative group called PRS Research Service recently compiled some alarming statistics about why the existing mechanisms to fight corruption in India aren’t working. India already has a Central Vigilance Commission (CVC), an auditing agency that can and does investigate misdeeds and recommend action, as it did recently with the Commonwealth Games and allocation of wireless spectrum; the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) can then prosecute. The problem, PRS points out, is that the CVC needs permission from the state or central government (the same one it’s investigating) to actually bring a case to prosecution. Not surprisingly, delays are common, and only 6% of cases between 2005-2009 were prosecuted. And even when they are, the CBI is ill-equipped to do so. PRS’s analysis found that “As of December 2010, 21% of the sanctioned posts in CBI were vacant. This includes 52% of the posts of law officers, 65% of technical officers and 21% of executive officers.”

The Lokpal Bill would address that in part – this new agency would not need anyone’s permission to prosecute. But as a perceptive editorial on the India Real Time blog points out, Indians may want to rethink putting so much faith and power in an un-elected body:

The Jan Lokpal bill foresees the creation of an independent body that can prosecute politicians and bureaucrats on its own without any permission from the executive, the legislature, or the judiciary. Its members will be appointed through a participatory process. And many of the anti-corruption arms of the government’s investigative agencies will be merged into this new body.

In other words, the bill envisages a council of wise men and women, sitting outside the electoral system, who will have the power to oversee all arms of the government. If we cannot trust the men and women that we elect to power, then why should we be able to trust the integrity and wisdom of another set of men and women who we do not even have a chance to vote out of power?

The public support for Hazare is a clear sign that Indians believe their democracy is broken. Is it really beyond repair?