The government refuses to reckon the growing public anger against corruption and blame peaceful protesters for using “undemocratic” means to undermine parliament and destabilize the elected government. It refuses to recognize that a corrupt government has no place in modern civilized society. The latest decision of the government to discuss all the Lok Pal drafts in Lok Sabha shows that the UPA leadership has no option left but to expand the scope of the official Bill.

For several months, the government strongly denied the telecom scam even after the CAG report was out and stigmatized Andimuthu Raja had gone to jail. Congress spokespersons hopped one after another television studio to publicly defend the spectrum allotment policy. The new telecom minister, Kapil Sibal, even appointed a retired Supreme Court judge with the clear intention to wrong the CAG report and get a clean cheat for the UPA government. Unfortunately, the judge’s report put the government in greater discomfort. Congress spokespersons trashed the CAG report and questioned the jurisdiction of the constitutionally powered super-auditors for its out-of-the-books observations and comments.

The authority of the CAG, a constitutional body, as a watchdog of government income and expenditure and verifier of its financial statements is being repeatedly questioned by the government. It says CAG has no investigative role, which is the job of the Parliamentary Accounting Committee (PAC). Sorry, Sirs, you are wrong. Investigations and verification of documents are part of any audit function. The CAG is doing exactly that to establish if the government accounts and financial statements merit the auditors’ certification as being “true and fair.” The CAG’s observations and comments are vital to the PAC’s function. Few, except possibly this UPA government, will disagree that the CAG is very much within its audit jurisdiction to identify and report accounting lapses, if any, or if the government institutions and organizations followed the generally approved accounting practices (GAAP).

The loss of government income (as in the case of 2G spectrum allocation), inflated expenditure and unnecessary purchases leading to financial loss to the exchequer, over-priced procurement and irregular project and supply contracts (as in the case of Commonwealth Games execution) and maintenance of proper accounts are very much part of the CAG’s audit concerns. Instead of appreciating the tremendous efforts being made by those CAG auditors to protect the interest of the exchequer by projecting a fair picture of official transactions, the government and the Congress party are even accusing the CAG of exceeding its brief.

The government’s reaction to the peaceful anti-corruption movement by the civil society, mainly under the leadership of Anna Hazare, had been despicably aggressive and even violent. It is devoid of any democratic principle and morality. The mid-night police lathi-charge on sleeping women and children demonstrators at Ramlila Maidan, the sudden arrest of Anna Hazare, putting police conditions on his peaceful ‘fast’ programme, the bid to destroy Anna’s public image by falsely branding him ‘corrupt’ and calling him ‘army deserter’, etc., project, if anything, the government’s ruthless resolve to crush the people’s movement against corruption and the systematic loot of the country by a powerful government-politician-business nexus. The government’s insensible and insensitive approach to the matter incited the youth across the country to join Anna’s anti-corruption movement.

In the 1975-77 emergency-style, the government is using ‘tax-raids’ as a weapon to malign or even terrorise all its dissenters – from Baba Ramdev to Jagan Mohan Reddy. If Ramdev had amassed illegal assets, he did not do so overnight. What was the government’s law enforcement machinery doing all these years when the Yoga guru was allegedly building his illegal empire at home and abroad? Why raid him now after he refused to tow the government line and tried to stage a peaceful anti-corruption dharna at Ramlila Maidan? Why raid Jagan’s alleged “ill-gotten” assets now? What were the taxmen doing to catch him before he left the Congress party to lead the Telengana agitation? If a sitting Italian Prime Minister could face a world-wide televised corruption trial, why is the UPA against even including our prime minister and lower bureaucracy within the proposed Lokpal ambit?

People are being misled by the government and political personalities about the function of Parliament where, they argue, law making ought to take precedence over debates on burning issues such as corruption, black money menace, the CWG loot, Telengana, cash-for-MPs, price rise, executive excesses, crop failure, farmers’ suicide, devastating flood or drought, terrorism and governance deficit. Traditionally, whenever the opposition raises a debatable issue, noisy attacks are launched from the treasury bench to get buried any discussion on government failure and, thereby, forcing frequent shut-down of Parliament sessions. Yet, the opposition is always blamed for disruption of ‘normal work’ in Parliament. By ‘normal work’ the government means moving law bills, passing legislations and extra-budgetary demands.

India’s poor governance record and all pervasive corruption have nothing to do with lack of legislations. In fact, it has excessive legislations. What the country lacks is their honest implementation. In 64 years of independent India, the national government has enacted more laws than any other democracies in the world. Under the British rule, India specific acts started emerging only since the first quarter of 1800. Between 1836 and 1850, only 22 such acts were promulgated. During 1851-75, the number of new laws enacted went up to 68, including the most important Indian Penal Code (1860) after the Sepoy Mutiny. The number of laws enacted in the next 25 years till 1900 was 84. Only 70 acts were added between 1901 and 1925. The number fell to only 58 during 1926-47, including the Foreigners’ Act, 1946 and Industrial Disputes Act, 1947.

There was an explosion of new laws soon after Independence. Some 63 acts were promulgated in just three years, even before the Constitution was adopted. Between1951 and 1975, as many as 345 new central legislations were framed. And, during 1975-2000, Parliament passed 314 bills to become law, including the Foreign Exchange Management Act, 1999. If one also takes into account the number of laws governing India’s 28 states and seven union territories, it will run into several thousand pieces. It would appear that for every activity, there is a state or central law controlling its conduct. The range and variety of laws that govern India are broadly divided into 12 categories. They are: constitution law, administrative law, criminal law, contract law, labour law, tort law, property law, tax law, family law, corporate law, nationality law and law enforcement law.

The Prevention of Money Laundering Act came in 2002, three years after the enactment of FEMA. Ironically, illegal money transfer through ‘havala’ started peaking only since 2002, ushering in a new era of institutionalized corruption, stock market betting, explosion of mutual funds, FIIs and tax-havens playing key role in Indian financial market, gambling in the name of forward trading in commodities, etc. Clearly, the government had failed in enforcement of these laws along with several other existing tax and other laws to control growing financial crimes and corruption.

In more civilized democracies in Europe and North America, debates and discussions on burning local issues generally take precedence over law making in parliament or in house of elected representatives. Special sessions are called to discuss or debate such important issues. Only a few days ago, the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, curtailed his brief vacation to summon a special session of Parliament to discuss riots and looting on UK streets by a bunch of hoodlums. Such things are unthinkable in India. Did the government care to call special Parliament sessions only to discuss the 26/11 terror attacks in Mumbai or financial scams of the magnitude of 2G allocation or the CWG loot or legal access to a trillion dollar Indian black money stashed in Swiss and other foreign banks or the unprecedented food price inflation or the controversial anti-corruption ombudsman (Lokpal) bill? Had the government done so, there would have been little problem in running scheduled Parliament sessions to carry on ‘normal work.’

Instead, the Indian government is behaving more like an intolerant police state. The syndrome is not new. Whenever the government was led by the Congress party, it promoted authoritarianism and rewarded sycophancy. That a party spokesperson such as Manish Tewari can get away with impunity with his diatribes against senior opposition leaders before the electronic media and calling Anna Hazare a ‘fraud’ only exhibits the party’s total disrespect for democratic values and moral bankruptcy. Persons like Tewari are shame to any civilized society. Their uncivil manners and arrogant public posturing remind one of the ‘emergency days’ under the then prime minister, Indira Gandhi, fiercely gagging dissent and promoting sycophancy.

Few expect corruption to disappear from public life after the installation of Lokpal or Jan Lokpal. Yet, it is rather amusing that a government, which is being publicly pilloried almost every day for harbouring and defending corruption, should solely take upon itself to force a Lokpal Bill of its choice. While the civil society had been insisting on an ‘independent’ Lokpal, the UPA was hell bent on installing only a ‘dependent’ Lokpal, who would operate under the tutelage of the government. The bitter truth is that this government has no moral right to prepare and move a Lokpal bill. Also, seeing any effective Lokpal bill through under the present circumstances could be an extremely frustrating exercise as it will require clearance from some of the country’s most corrupt politicians sitting on concerned parliamentary committees to vet and correct the bill. (IPA Service)