There has been some discussion lately about excluding the lower bureaucracy from the Lokpal. One of the main reasons being bandied about is that the Lokpal will be overloaded should it include the lower bureaucracy, and it will fail as a result of this overload. There are two sides to this issue -- the politics and the feasibility.
Let us first look at the politics behind this move. The government, or for that matter, most political parties, are keen on excluding the lower bureaucracy because corruption at this level feeds the rank and file of the political parties. For example, more than 80% of Rs 40,000 crore of the PDS subsidy is siphoned off, all of it through ration shops and food officers. The Rs 35,000 crore food grain scam in UP over many years, which is currently being probed by the CBI, took place at the lowest rung of the bureaucracy involving several hundred employees. This is a phenomenon that cuts across party lines and sadly comes at the expense of the poorest of our poor people. Including the lower bureaucracy under the Lokpal could potentially cut off the life-supply of our country’s political establishment. Not surprisingly, a consensus around excluding the lower bureaucracy is bound to emerge among our political parties.
As far as the feasibility is concerned, at the surface, it might seem like a legitimate argument. But the government appears to be very keen on including NGOs under the ambit of the Lokpal. There are close to sixty-five thousand employees in the lower bureaucracy while there are close to 50 lakh NGOs in our country! On the one hand, our government does not want to include the lower bureaucracy because it is a seemingly mammoth task. On the other, they want to tackle corruption among NGOs! The issue comes back to politics. Covering NGOs implies that the government has a free hand to harass anyone and everyone who has an NGO (Kiran Bedi being a current victim). If NGOs are covered, it means that if you and a handful of cricket lovers collect some dues and form a club to play “gulley cricket” but have bad things to say about those in power, you could be under the radar too! Clearly, feasibility is an excuse to camouflage the need of political parties to protect the corrupt practices in the lower bureaucracy and to target NGOs that don’t suit their purpose.
When it comes to feasibility, let’s not jump to conclusions. India has produced some of the best brains in technology. Our engineers have been an integral part of some of the most advanced technological developments in the world. Moreover, times have changed. Advances in technology have made it possible for strangers from across the globe to collaborate effectively in real-time without ever meeting in person. Traditional governmental tasks could use a significant overhaul with the use of the Internet. From a technology perspective, many things that seemed impossible in the past are doable today given time, money and the required technological know-how. Didn’t we as a country launch the gargantuan UID project to tackle identity for 120 crore people? Why should we avoid setting up a system to curb corruption among sixty-five thousand employees of our lower bureaucracy?
Let me give you a simple yet poignant example to further illustrate this point. You might be aware that many of our most passionate and committed RTI activists have been eliminated by vested interests over the last few years. A young man still studying in his third year in IIT decided that he could apply technology to at least partially solve this problem. So, along with a couple of other like-minded technologists from around the globe, he set up a website named RTI Anonymous (http://www.getup4change.org). This website provides a simple service for anyone who might be interested in filing RTI applications without having to fear for their lives. After you provide the details of your RTI filing on this website, these young men file the RTI application on your behalf. They have no axe to grind. They are simply acting as facilitators for a very useful service. Once the response is received, they simply pass on the information back to you. Undoubtedly, this is a simple, yet invaluable service that can benefit many. It was easy enough to implement and manage that this team could do it from anywhere, as long as they had Internet access.
My intent of narrating this is not to trivialize the feasibility issue but to highlight the importance of leveraging technology and unleashing the creativity of our best and brightest. There is little doubt that we, as a country, have more than the necessary human capital to take on the biggest challenges. If we can allocate the resources and put our best minds behind it, tackling corruption in the lower bureaucracy is not insurmountable.
Let us not shy away from problems simply because they are hard. The reality is that we have a serious problem of excessive corruption in government, and we desperately need solutions to tackle corruption at every possible level. Excluding the lower bureaucracy from the ambit of Lokpal is like trying to cook “sambar” without “toor dal” or “rajmah” without kidney beans. Suggesting that media, corporations, etc., should also be under the Lokpal is a distraction from the fundamental problem at hand. The primary focus of version 1.0 of our Lokpal bill should be on tackling corruption in government, and government alone.
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