Indiais Anti-corruption Revolution Needs to Sustain the First Phase Yet

Congratulations to all as the Parliamentarians complete their drama and satisfies Anna to end his fast scheduled 10 AM on August 28. That is but just a small win for Anna, his team and the people who have joined the anti corruption revolution as it entered the first phase. The struggle has just begun.

 

The younger generations will develop greater confidence now with the example of Anna and his team carrying out a non-violent movement to successfully enlist the enthusiasm of a large number of people who can afford to rise against the resistance of politicians and Parliamentarians for forty years to not let the Parliament to express the Will of the people. The supremacy of the Parliament was a vague and lame argument that the politicians and parliamentarians have been  trying to confuse the people with because they wanted corruption to continue to make their business flourishing. The Parliament is just a mere technical institution to reflect and act as per the will of the people: it cannot have a will of its own or supremacy over the will of the people. Individual Parliamentarians are only to act as servants of the people and cannot demand supremacy over the common man in democracy. These fundamental points have to be recognized by political parties and parliamentarians. They cannot claim the right, as they have been doing for the last 6 decades, to lord over the people like kings and monsobdars.

 

But do not be complacent or carried out by a small win in the War that is going to be prolonged and tougher. The anti-corruption revolution in India is still in its infancy and given the track record of the past, the political parties and parliamentarians can still fool the people as they have set for themselves an yet unspecified date to come out with the Lokpal Bill with the three basic principles to which they seem to have agreed: (a) covering the lower bureaucracy subject to Lokpal trial,(b) setting up citizens' charter to ensure that the govt. employees inflict on them personal financial loss due to their inefficiency, negligence and failure to meet standards of service delivery and (c) establishment of Lokayukts to deal with corruption and inefficiency of State government and local self-government employees.

 

In the future months, the political parties and trade unions will make all efforts to organise government employees at all levels to term a strong Lokpal Bill as draconian and organise counter anti-corruption agitations. The anti-corruption revolutionaries and supporters will have to nip the various efforts to sabotage the revolution by a few millions of government/ civic administration employees led by politicians and a section of parliamentarians to force a billion of Indian citizens to allow corruption to continue. There is lot of struggle ahead for the anti-corruption revolutionaries in the months ahead to even get the desired strong Lokpal Bill enacted. Anna, his team and other supporters of anti-corruption revolution must continue to be vigilant and ready for further non-violent struggle: new deadlines and targets must be set for the servants (parliamentarians) of the people which they must fulfil of face much wider, broader and prolonged non-violent agitation by the revolutionaries who have gathered together under the leadership of Anna Hazare.

 

Get prepared for a total and much stronger and more broad-based revolution, non-violent revolution, that people must carry on to root out the evil political philosophies that are crafted to ensure flourishing business of politicians and political parties only through corruption at the cost of the individual citizens, the Indian Nation and the Indian economy.

Indian Anti-Corruption Revolution Enters the First Phase

History of the current decade may record Anna Hazare and Ramdev as the leaders of the First Phase of Revolution against Corruption in India. They have come to use their personal integrity to give an expression to the section of Indian people who wishes to get rid of the six decades of corruption driven socio-economic environment so that their children and grand children are able to live with the honesty. For the first time in the last six decades a civil society movement against corruption has spread over many parts of the country signaling the break in the tolerance of the evil effects of widespread corruption in the country. Though some has dubbed this as an attempt of the new rich middle class to increase their power relative to the State / Government, the spontaneity of participation of huge number of people including youth and children shows that this is not just a class struggle of any type. It is just the beginning of the revolution and only a small percentage of people have participated and got enthused by the civil society action. Some others have expressed doubt that many among the current anticorruption revolutionaries may themselves be tainted by corruption, but that is exactly how the change occurs : dacoits turn Balmiki at some stage the same way as communist revolutionaries turn themselves into aristocratic life and leader of oppression of masses.

It will take a long time for the Revolution to get support of overwhelming majority of Indians. The habit of corrupt behaviour will take time to weaken and die. Meanwhile, the revolutionaries will suffer both repression and sabotage by the the design and maintenance engineers of India Corruption - the political parties of all varities from extreme left to the extreme right. Also, being the first of its kind a civil society sponsored pan-India, this revolution will be more guided by emotionary zeal and less by brain power that could give focus and direction to the Anti-Corruption Social Revolution. There will be disappointments and confusion about the Revolution for quite some time, but it is unlikely to die. The viability of the corruption driven society and economy has already eroded: its own dynamics points to the inevitable demise of the Indian system founded on corruption.

The nascent revolution suffers from a few serious deficiencies/ weaknesses. But these weaknesses are likely to get corrected as the revolution proceeds. The wrath is against a few big incidents of corruption by political leaders in nexus with bureaucrats and a few business persons. The immediate impact of the first phase of the revolution would be disruption in the political and governance process. A few corrupt or suspected corrupt people will get punished. A Lokpal Bill of some sort will be passed by the Parliament sooner or later when the political parties will no more be able to delay-dally because of the loss of their credibility. That the Lokpal Bill is not getting passed soon is partly because of the leaders of the Revolutionaries: they are all directing their anti-corruption agitations only against the government of the day. This is ridiculous: all political parties are the army of protecting Corruption.  The agitations should have been aimed at all political parties and hunger strikes should have been organised in the front of offices of all political parties in the Capital cities throughout India. To begin with the drama at the Ramlilla ground is ok. But this would be serious weakness if the revolution has to spread and become effective.

The second weakness of the first phase of the Anti-Corrution revolution  in this current first phase is the emotion driven brains that belive that corruption can be legislate out.  Soon the revolutionary leaders will realise that if honesty cannot be legislated in to the Nation, Corruption cannot be legislated out. The emphasis on Lokpal Bill will only handicap the spread of revolution.  The cure for corruption lies not in creating another special detecting and trial agency to weed out and punish corrupt people in the positions of power. The real cure lies in designing and implementing a political and economic system that minimises the scope/ opportunity of corruption. Emphasis should now move on to radical downsizing of the discretionary powers in the political and government processes and on real time on-line transparency of all discretionary powers excercised by all political and government decision making individuals and groups: make public all details for any decision taken as soon as the decision-making process starts in respect of each decision till the decision is taken. This is the system that willultimately rule the World: the quicker India adopts this system the better for corruption eradication.

The third weakness of the current phase of the anti-corruption revolutionaries is  its focus on the surveillance, investigation, trial and punishment of corrupt prime ministers, ministers, government officers and judges. This is too narrow a target for corruption to be eliminated. Soon, politicians will argue that corruption has at least two parties - one giver of bribe and another receiver of bribe and hence the giver of bribes, especially the companies should be brought into the fold of Lokpal. And revolutionaries in their zeal will accept that suggestion and we will be back to square one. Revolutionaries must recognise that as soon the bribe giver is taken as a target, bribe receivers will get scot free most of the time as it is now. If the revolution has to succeed then it is the bribe taker who will be at fault for three reasons: (a) abusing official position/ power to favour someone or discriminate against some other, (b) taking bribe/ consideration/ favour from the any party through grant of favour or through threatening discrimination/ or other sufferring/ extortion, and (c) allowing some one to bribe. Those who give bribe should not be treated as an offence as it will be presumed that bribe giving was forced by the bribe giver.

The fourth weakness of the current phase of revolution is its focus on Delhi and big rally grounds / parks there. If corruption has to be eradicated the DDT of hunger strike and rallies should take place as and when corruption eggs are hatched in the millions of offices of the Government of India, state Governments and local self governments to the district and panchyat levels and police posts along the hoghways through which goods carrier trucks have to move. Civil society's anti-corruption revolutionaries need to spread their organisation at the grass roots level where corruption is a daily affair affecting crores of people and demoralising the future generations. The revolutionaries need to have their own intelligece network to carry out surprise DDT spraying at the point of the birth of a corruption incident. I am not suggesting that this would be necessary ebvery where for each incident of corruption but such surprise attacks should be spread out enough to scare the potential corrupt. Getting the corrupt caught and attacked red-handed is what will enthuse people to become the army of honesty to fight the army of corruption that includes millions of small bribe takers and political party sponsored, police/ administration supported musclemen extortionist.

A final weakness of Anti-Corruption revolutionaries is its leaders reluctance to spread the message that Anti-Corruption Revolution by the civil society is fundamental Constitutional Obligation, one of the most patriotic acts and the most socialist and emocratic democratic right of the citizens of India. Revolutionaries need to counter the branding the political parties build. Citizens must get to believe that elected political representatives are no more important than civil society leaders if the latter have mass support for their revolution against failure of elected  political representatives fail to deliver in time what the society wants. Elected representatives have just five-year terms: civil society leaders have terms till they loose popolar mass support for a national, societal cause.

A successful revolution against corruption is not going to be an easy task to organise, lead and direct. It is not going to be a quick battle. It is going to be long war and the revolutionaries must be more competent and intelligent than Corruption Army's and  spies. In all likelihood the current phase driven more by emotions will create the turmoil that would draw more and more citizens to join the revolution and make it more objective-oriented and comprehensive in its attempt to weed out corruption from the roots. That is the process through which the next phase of the anti-corruption revolution would begin probably in 1914. The sinosidial curve of corruption is now very close to its peak: it is about to burst by its own deadweight burden paving its juorney downhill. We are merely waiting for the tipping point.

Long live the Anti-corruption Revolution. Short live the defense of corruption! Let Anti-Corruption emotions gather powerful brains, ears, eyes and limbs as fast as possible!