Sept.-October 2011 
Year 18    No.160
Agenda


 

A modern-day witch-hunt

Fifteen-year-old Aryadita Balakrishnan questions the Lokpal frenzy

BY ARYADITA BALAKRISHNAN

Seeing images of a stubborn Anna Hazare and Baba Ramdev conjures up images of India’s long struggle against imperi-alism and domination to break the shackles and emerge a free nation. Sixty-four years later, we find ourselves in a similar fix. Mahatma Gandhi pioneered the method of fasting to get his way and everybody else is just following the field guide he left behind.

Corruption, or the C-word, has become a huge phenomenon, managing to stay in the news for more than six months now. The whole Lokpal campaign has been reduced to nothing more than both sides duelling to the death in an attempt to impose their methods of mitigating the C-word. Thanks to Anna Hazare’s defiance and the widespread support he has received from seemingly blind intellectuals, a game-changing bill has degenerated into nothing more than a legal and organised witch-hunt. Heads are going to roll for better or for worse, whether it is “Jokepal” or the real deal.

Much as they’d like to overlook it, it takes two hands to clap and, similarly, it takes two to give and accept a bribe. The inconvenient truth lies in the fact that bribes are not paid by officials to themselves but rather are paid by greedy members of our own society just so they can skip all the queues.

Look into the future: Nine men, a confederacy of dunces, wielding supreme powers, getting judges and prime ministers alike to cower in fear before them. A witch-hunt; India engulfed by a newfound passion against corruption. In Nazi Germany, people often made calls to the Gestapo (secret police) accusing their rivals of being anti-Nazi. The same will happen in India; each one accusing the other of doling out bribes. It would become a new trick that schoolkids played: call the “Lokpal Hotline” and accuse your teacher of giving a bribe and then watch with joy as she is whisked away.

Millions of people are employed by the government. All of us have our own fatal flaws; some are greedy, some opportunistic. Though we accuse the government and bureaucracy of being slow and ineffective, we wouldn’t last a minute in their positions and with the workload they bear. Sometimes we have to be cruel to be kind. In this case, cruel would mean allowing them to get away with a single corruption-related offence because they are irreplaceable and their day-to-day tasks are inconceivable to the “common man”.

Anna Hazare called the bill in its current form “fractured” but how can it be so if it is not yet born? At best, it can be said that an initial ultrasound has revealed certain deformities.

We cannot have a Lokpal dominated by just one side: Anna Hazare representing the “common man” with the “imperialist” government on the other side. Anybody who doesn’t see eye to eye with the Gandhian finds himself pushed into a corner and silenced. Branded undemocratic and unpatriotic, his right to freedom of speech is transferred to another vocal supporter.

In the 1950s Senator Joseph McCarthy purged alleged communists, inciting fear in the minds and hearts of millions of Americans. If we look closely, we see the same thing happening in India today. In his book The Art of War, Sun Tzu wrote: “All warfare is based on deception.” If the Hazare team claims that the government is ‘misleading’ the people, what gives Hazare and the janata the credibility to make such claims and to lead the people in the opposite direction? In the middle of all this we have the opposition who, true to their name, support anybody who opposes the government regardless of whether they make sense or not. But being a political party, when in crisis, they will develop an uncanny urge to stick together and make a decision that is in the interest of “Indian Democracy”.

Albert Einstein, when asked about Gandhi, said: “Generations to come… will scarce believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth.” More than 50 years have passed and it seems that Mr Hazare is eager to take Gandhi’s place on banknotes and on the walls of government offices. No doubt in his 30 years of peacefully crusading against the system Anna Hazare has done his share of good for the village and state. But in the end, Mr Hazare must realise that India is not an enlarged version of Ralegan Siddhi. India is not a one-baker, -butcher, -barber nation. It is a diverse nation with people from every caste and speaking every language. The Hazare team must remain cautious and careful, for if the bill is to have true power, it must reach every village, be a part of every panchayat, or else it will be just another one of the thousand bills drafted in the history of India. The government is an integral part of this step, for no other single body has the expanse and influence throughout the nation.

It takes two hands to clap. For every hand that taketh there is a hand that giveth. Why not penalise the briber and not the one who is bribed? Why not penalise both? A. Raja is in jail while Niira Radia is not. If you are ever caught by a police officer, would you rather go to the station and collect your licence later or pay a small “token of your appreciation” for the man’s work, get your licence and drive away?

In the end, it must be said that neither side is wrong but also no side is right. The best way to go about it is to inculcate values against corruption at an early age and not by holding somebody at gunpoint and threatening them if they do accept bribes. We are not under British rule and as Mr Kejriwal has let his tongue conveniently slip and urged us to “take to the streets” and “keep the fire burning”, we are left wondering if the people have been caught in a war they don’t have the time or inclination to fight.

In the end, we Indians are left with the schoolboy’s dilemma of whether to be popular and do as the “cool side” (Hazare) directs us or dare to be different and build our own opinions from the facts known to us.

(Aryadita Balakrishnan is a Class XI student of Jamnabai Narsee School, Mumbai.)


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