The problem with India Against Corruption (www.indiaagainstcorruption.org)
So, It's happening in the same manner in which it should be envisaged by a low IQ nation as India.
The crusade of India Against Corruption has turned into a personal war between Five-off-Five! The one batch of five being that from the government and the another five from another organisation calling themselves 'India against corruption' working under the umbrella of an organisation called Civil Society group.
I dislike this and I dislike it more when i see Indians time and again falling into the trap of proving "who is honest"! U see, first they put the blame on Sharad Pawar, and now the blame is on Shashi Bhushan, who is trying to prove that he is not dishonest. And slowly the crusade is hijacked away into a personal battle to prove whether person X is honest or not.!!? Isn't it funny that we the nation of 1.2 billion people have failed to figure out where exactly does this dishonest and it's hypocrisy lies!! We think it is in those 543, the parliamentarians, or maybe additionally in those MLAs and MLC's of all states of India summed up.
Isn't that the biggest fault we are doing?? Our whole crusade is not yet prepared and planned to assume that the actual battle is not against those handful ,543+, but against the 1.2 billion itself ! the entire population of India is a victim and cause of corruption, and all, for our non-standard definition of what is corruption and what is honesty.
It again reminds me of my lesson in Maritime law and how democracy is excercised at the United Nations.
The proper plan to weed out corruption for a long time should be that-- as a decent civil society group we should first acknowldge that there is an extreme and most expeditious need to get rid of corruption. In doing so, the CSO should, first and foremost, avoid getting into the blame game, by asking Sharad Pawar to quit or , say, Laloo Prasad to quit, or Shashi Bhushan to quit. And for a very simple reason that when asked formally on camera, even Sharad/ Laloo/ Shashi Bushan will express there consent to that fact that there is corruption , massive, in our society and there is need to do something about it.But so will each of the Indians do, no matter how much corrupt he is being in the darkness of night. ..kya kare, karna padtaa hai, zamaana aisa hai...That's our most common excuse.
So, like the way it goes in the UN, we first need to develop Articles of Faith in the Convention (against corruption). That should include only the statements about what is our faith, the reason why all people have collected on some issue or point.
The second step, as it goes at the UN, is to form a committee of experts who may well describe through their intense study what exactly is the problem we all 1.2billions are faced with. Corruption by mere understanding from the ordinary english language interpretation will itself lead to more 'corruptions' to happen. Corruption also means -- not working as it should.. and that is what will happen if we do not have a universal, standardised, definition.
The bigger known problem with Indian masses is that our society tends to work on the basis of generalist, not the experts. So there we are at it again. In the Five from the CSO, there are lawyers, ex-police official, ex-income-tax man, but not a single of them with a proven qualification and declared work on what is his definition of corruption. Infact, if individually questioned, I am pretty confident, they all five will even fail to acknowldege that Corruption, in some sense, has also benifitted some groups of people, from whom , a secret support from corruption is rightfully to be anticipated, while they in their own beliefs, may not be wrong about it.
For example, a person from a poor set-up, if he has succeeded and managed to find his right place in the society all by grace of corruption, will actually be supporting it from inside, while on surface he too maybe with the crusaders of against-corruption. Rather, the crusaders may themselves be those lot of people who have failed to reach some table which they wanted to achieve and therefore putting the cause of their failures on a devil, only now recalled, the Corruption. It may be there guise to position themselves strategically somewhere on top. CAN ANYONE confirm to me it is not so, and with all those who are against corruption! ANYONE!?
It's here that the philisophy and experts have to be roped in, to provide a universal definition of it, AND more importantly the one which is finally approved by the common people through the process of ballot. U see, India is a democracy, and all the politicians and the government people are rightful to make a noise, which is quite logical to accept, that, how can one say that those same people who have been elected by the people, be treated a Corrupt people. The 'popularly elected ones' are being blackmailed and charged by a group of hooligans under the unbrella of so called the CSO, and working from behind the shoulders and back (and stomach) of a 73-year old, named Anna Hazare.
Any answers to this logical mystery???
I do not know the members of the CSO, and definitely not , anything better than the people and ministers in the Government and Politics. PLEASE NOTE MY STATEMENT.
So , MY DEMAND IS THAT THE SYSTEM HAS TO BE SUCH WHICH WORKS SO AS TO YIELD THE HONESTY OF DEVINE LEVEL, EVEN WHILE ALL COMPONENT MEMBERS MAY THEMSELVES NOT BE HONEST.
AND YES, THAT IS POSSIBLE.
An applied knowledge of sciences and philosphy will have to be invoked by our Experts Committee to describe/circumscribe/in-scribe what is Corruption and What is honesty. They might have to make use of statistical laws such as Law of Statistical Stability of Large Numbers; the fact that whole group can be zero-aware leading to a complete annihiliation of the above law; and the knowledge of public administration management systems, whereby, a divine righteousness may be yielded by group of people while each of them may or may not be honest. The limitations of Democratic Systems which occur because of its reliance on Polling and majoritism will have to be taken into account.
It is then, that we obatin our definition set, (as it happens in all martime laws and code which we the sea-farers study), that we begin to form procedures to cure the problem. The present Jan Lokpal bill is , in some philosophical equivalent terms, the last of the few regulations of maritime convention which I study often. It speaks of remedies in case corruption happens.
The whole Anti -Corruption convention should first mention the design-ingredients of the public administration system which have been planted to rule out the corruption. In my field, the maritime syllabus, the training of personal is the first important point, while the system has been properly designed. Therefore, no system, even if well and robustly designed to rule out corruption, can work effectively unless the people operating it are tarined enough. Of course, the need for a near fool-proof designing of the system has not been dismissed.
With a proper, legal and valid definition in hand, which is also publically approved, it will become much comfortable for the system managers to re-design or adjust or update the systems to meet the new requirements.
In the Universal Principles, the UDHR, the systems should not be working by way of creating fear, but rather by way of creating awareness. It is in the Asian (read Chinese -kind) principles that things work by creating fear/ deterrance.
I still wonder why did the managers of 'India Against Corruption ' choose the Hong-Kong type 'Anti-corruption commission' type of model (refer wikipedia search on 'India Against Corruption') instead of some liberal democracy type model. In the least, there should be an attempt to create one executive institution, which is independant of parliament, and although not having any public executionary powers, but still obiliged to provide a formal advise, that of experts, to all the governments, both at centre and in states.
Nothing has yet been done to how the UP CM is ruthlessly spending away public money, even while the law courts have failed to legal- faults--means to check on them. And even if we know that the purchases for whimsical constructions are designed to siphon off public ex-chequer funds into personal coffers, there is no definition to prove that it is a form of corruption too, and therefore illegal.
It is with the perpetual enthornement of a counsellor arm of a public institution of high public esteem that the government should be given a yardstick to measure its success or failure, before the goverment can be fustigated with the same public yardstick for being corrupt. It is only when a formal institution designs a yardstick that the Government will start measuring own success or failure and then stop blowing its own trumpets thorugh publicity songs such as India Shinning, ...Uttam Pradesh and ...Badal raha a... pradesh.
The crusade of India Against Corruption has turned into a personal war between Five-off-Five! The one batch of five being that from the government and the another five from another organisation calling themselves 'India against corruption' working under the umbrella of an organisation called Civil Society group.
I dislike this and I dislike it more when i see Indians time and again falling into the trap of proving "who is honest"! U see, first they put the blame on Sharad Pawar, and now the blame is on Shashi Bhushan, who is trying to prove that he is not dishonest. And slowly the crusade is hijacked away into a personal battle to prove whether person X is honest or not.!!? Isn't it funny that we the nation of 1.2 billion people have failed to figure out where exactly does this dishonest and it's hypocrisy lies!! We think it is in those 543, the parliamentarians, or maybe additionally in those MLAs and MLC's of all states of India summed up.
Isn't that the biggest fault we are doing?? Our whole crusade is not yet prepared and planned to assume that the actual battle is not against those handful ,543+, but against the 1.2 billion itself ! the entire population of India is a victim and cause of corruption, and all, for our non-standard definition of what is corruption and what is honesty.
It again reminds me of my lesson in Maritime law and how democracy is excercised at the United Nations.
The proper plan to weed out corruption for a long time should be that-- as a decent civil society group we should first acknowldge that there is an extreme and most expeditious need to get rid of corruption. In doing so, the CSO should, first and foremost, avoid getting into the blame game, by asking Sharad Pawar to quit or , say, Laloo Prasad to quit, or Shashi Bhushan to quit. And for a very simple reason that when asked formally on camera, even Sharad/ Laloo/ Shashi Bushan will express there consent to that fact that there is corruption , massive, in our society and there is need to do something about it.But so will each of the Indians do, no matter how much corrupt he is being in the darkness of night. ..kya kare, karna padtaa hai, zamaana aisa hai...That's our most common excuse.
So, like the way it goes in the UN, we first need to develop Articles of Faith in the Convention (against corruption). That should include only the statements about what is our faith, the reason why all people have collected on some issue or point.
The second step, as it goes at the UN, is to form a committee of experts who may well describe through their intense study what exactly is the problem we all 1.2billions are faced with. Corruption by mere understanding from the ordinary english language interpretation will itself lead to more 'corruptions' to happen. Corruption also means -- not working as it should.. and that is what will happen if we do not have a universal, standardised, definition.
The bigger known problem with Indian masses is that our society tends to work on the basis of generalist, not the experts. So there we are at it again. In the Five from the CSO, there are lawyers, ex-police official, ex-income-tax man, but not a single of them with a proven qualification and declared work on what is his definition of corruption. Infact, if individually questioned, I am pretty confident, they all five will even fail to acknowldege that Corruption, in some sense, has also benifitted some groups of people, from whom , a secret support from corruption is rightfully to be anticipated, while they in their own beliefs, may not be wrong about it.
For example, a person from a poor set-up, if he has succeeded and managed to find his right place in the society all by grace of corruption, will actually be supporting it from inside, while on surface he too maybe with the crusaders of against-corruption. Rather, the crusaders may themselves be those lot of people who have failed to reach some table which they wanted to achieve and therefore putting the cause of their failures on a devil, only now recalled, the Corruption. It may be there guise to position themselves strategically somewhere on top. CAN ANYONE confirm to me it is not so, and with all those who are against corruption! ANYONE!?
It's here that the philisophy and experts have to be roped in, to provide a universal definition of it, AND more importantly the one which is finally approved by the common people through the process of ballot. U see, India is a democracy, and all the politicians and the government people are rightful to make a noise, which is quite logical to accept, that, how can one say that those same people who have been elected by the people, be treated a Corrupt people. The 'popularly elected ones' are being blackmailed and charged by a group of hooligans under the unbrella of so called the CSO, and working from behind the shoulders and back (and stomach) of a 73-year old, named Anna Hazare.
Any answers to this logical mystery???
I do not know the members of the CSO, and definitely not , anything better than the people and ministers in the Government and Politics. PLEASE NOTE MY STATEMENT.
So , MY DEMAND IS THAT THE SYSTEM HAS TO BE SUCH WHICH WORKS SO AS TO YIELD THE HONESTY OF DEVINE LEVEL, EVEN WHILE ALL COMPONENT MEMBERS MAY THEMSELVES NOT BE HONEST.
AND YES, THAT IS POSSIBLE.
An applied knowledge of sciences and philosphy will have to be invoked by our Experts Committee to describe/circumscribe/in-scribe what is Corruption and What is honesty. They might have to make use of statistical laws such as Law of Statistical Stability of Large Numbers; the fact that whole group can be zero-aware leading to a complete annihiliation of the above law; and the knowledge of public administration management systems, whereby, a divine righteousness may be yielded by group of people while each of them may or may not be honest. The limitations of Democratic Systems which occur because of its reliance on Polling and majoritism will have to be taken into account.
It is then, that we obatin our definition set, (as it happens in all martime laws and code which we the sea-farers study), that we begin to form procedures to cure the problem. The present Jan Lokpal bill is , in some philosophical equivalent terms, the last of the few regulations of maritime convention which I study often. It speaks of remedies in case corruption happens.
The whole Anti -Corruption convention should first mention the design-ingredients of the public administration system which have been planted to rule out the corruption. In my field, the maritime syllabus, the training of personal is the first important point, while the system has been properly designed. Therefore, no system, even if well and robustly designed to rule out corruption, can work effectively unless the people operating it are tarined enough. Of course, the need for a near fool-proof designing of the system has not been dismissed.
With a proper, legal and valid definition in hand, which is also publically approved, it will become much comfortable for the system managers to re-design or adjust or update the systems to meet the new requirements.
In the Universal Principles, the UDHR, the systems should not be working by way of creating fear, but rather by way of creating awareness. It is in the Asian (read Chinese -kind) principles that things work by creating fear/ deterrance.
I still wonder why did the managers of 'India Against Corruption ' choose the Hong-Kong type 'Anti-corruption commission' type of model (refer wikipedia search on 'India Against Corruption') instead of some liberal democracy type model. In the least, there should be an attempt to create one executive institution, which is independant of parliament, and although not having any public executionary powers, but still obiliged to provide a formal advise, that of experts, to all the governments, both at centre and in states.
Nothing has yet been done to how the UP CM is ruthlessly spending away public money, even while the law courts have failed to legal- faults--means to check on them. And even if we know that the purchases for whimsical constructions are designed to siphon off public ex-chequer funds into personal coffers, there is no definition to prove that it is a form of corruption too, and therefore illegal.
It is with the perpetual enthornement of a counsellor arm of a public institution of high public esteem that the government should be given a yardstick to measure its success or failure, before the goverment can be fustigated with the same public yardstick for being corrupt. It is only when a formal institution designs a yardstick that the Government will start measuring own success or failure and then stop blowing its own trumpets thorugh publicity songs such as India Shinning, ...Uttam Pradesh and ...Badal raha a... pradesh.
Most of the communities in India (such as Bengali), are succumbed in 'Culture of Poverty'(a theory introduced by an American anthropologist Oscar Lewis), irrespective of class or economic strata, lives in pavement or apartment. Nobody is at all ashamed of the deep-rooted corruption, decaying general quality of life, worst Politico-administrative system, weak mother language, continuous absorption of common space (mental as well as physical, both). We are becoming fathers & mothers only by self-procreation, mindlessly & blindfold. Simply depriving their(the children) fundamental rights of a decent, caring society, fearless & dignified living. Do not ever look for any other positive alternative behaviour (values) to perform human way of parenthood, i.e. deliberately co-parenting of those children those are born out of ignorance, real poverty. All of us are being driven only by the very animal instinct. If the Bengali people ever be able to bring that genuine freedom (from vicious cycle of 'poverty') in their own life/attitude, involve themselves in 'Production of Space’(Henri Lefebvre), at least initiate a movement by heart, decent & dedicated Politics will definitely come up.
ReplyDelete- Siddhartha Bandyopadhyay, 16/4, Girish Banerjee Lane, Howrah-711101.
Thank U, Siddhartha ji, for ur valuable feed.
ReplyDeleteI am anyways with the organisation-- India Against Corruption, and agree that most of the things which u mention, should follow automatically once some active measures come about to eliminate corruption.