Showing grace in defeat Prime Minister Manmohan Singh declared, “The fact that civil society and the government have joined hands to evolve a consensus to move this historic (lok pal) legislation augurs well for our democracy.” Caught between the need to defend the institutional processes of the State and the desire to respond to the anger and anguish of civil society, the prime minister went more than halfway in conceding the demands of an assortment of civil society activists led by Anna Hazare of Maharashtra. Only history will judge whether this uneasy compromise between the government and social activists is a blow for Indian democracy or a blow to the Indian State. History will also have to judge whether the institution of Lok Pal will reverse the rising tide of corruption in public life. There is much less corruption in Narendra Modi’s Gujarat, which does not have the institution of Lok Ayukta, while there is certainly more corruption in Karnataka, which has an active Lok Ayukta. This suggests that one man and his band of dedicated staff are unlikely to make all that difference unless effective political and administrative leadership is able to stamp out corruption and incentives for rent seeking.
It now remains to be seen if the committee of ten wise men, half from the government and the rest from civil society, will be able to arrive at a meaningful compromise that would satisfy both constitutional imperatives and societal demands. Much will depend on the wisdom and maturity of both sets of members. Equally, it will depend on what role the media and political parties choose to play. The frenzied amphitheatre of news television has made a mockery of reasoned and reasonable debate. Like old Roman crowds cheering the feeding of humans to lions, or like spectators in a bull fight drawing pleasure from the pain of a dumb animal, news television has finally erased the already blurred lines between news and entertainment, between reportage and comment, between fact and fiction.
Now that the government has conceded ground and social activists have won their case, all concerned should step back and ask: what exactly is the governance challenge in the country and how should this be addressed? The laboriously produced reports of the Second Administrative Reforms Commission (SARC), chaired by Veerappa Moily, have some very good ideas for combating corruption in public life and imparting greater transparency and accountability to the government. The fourth report of SARC titled “Ethics in Governance” (2007), inspired by the Gladstonian principle that “the purpose of a government is to make it easy for people to do good and difficult to do evil”, has some very sensible and mostly practical proposals for governance reform. These must be implemented immediately. Going beyond, businessmen, film actors and other professionals who enthusiastically supported Mr Hazare’s fast should now direct their energies towards fighting black money, tax evasion and other corrupt practices in their respective professions. As Mahatma Gandhi said, be the change you want to see!