(note: I don't mean to be rude, but this comment has barely been up for 1 minute and I'm already being down-voted. Surely no one can read something this long this fast and down-vote even faster. I've tried to write a reasoned critique of the phenomena before me. It's not a political comment, but a logical one.)
Any constitution is a fine balance of power, a body like this which concentrates power outside of the constitution without carefully thought out checks and balances can be used to deliver the coup de grace to democracy. After all who guards the guards?
This will be extremely unpopular over here, but the citizens of any nation are responsible for corruption. Their leaders aren't alien beings who have descended from planet Z to rule upon their country. They were and are chosen from amongst them, and in a representative democracy it is they who choose them. You might argue that the vote itself is an ineffective tool, and you will be right, but it does offer us the opportunity to ruthlessly edit people from power. At the end it is the culture of a country that shapes a leader to a great deal. They are simply mirrors of society, but we seem to run away from that fact.
The same goes for bureaucrats and any other malaise that plagues society. They are from amongst us, and although the blame may be greater on some shoulders, it is borne by all of us.
The inherent assumption is that the people in this organization will be somehow pure, sans biases, and without malice. It makes me doubt this because human nature being human nature, sooner or later someone creative is going to come along and will convince people to side with him/her and play this unbalanced system to achieve control. It's not a matter of if, but when.
Of course, I might be wrong and this bill might be a carefully calculated with the calculus of power to be perfectly neutral, but I somehow doubt that given the sheer PR and the herd mentality that seems to surround this. For example the man portrayed as a Gandhian whipped drunks in his home town in the name of "social progress", how is that behavior Gandhian? (I'm not questioning if the behavior is right or wrong, I'm simply asking how can someone who whips people be called the modern Gandhi?)
I think that something rather interesting is going on over here, and that the true nature of this bill and the organization it will create will be apparent as time passes on.
I honestly hope that it's genuine, and it won't lead to a calculated attempt to gain power, but I wouldn't bet on it.
Even if the lokpal bill comes and goes, the impact has already gone far beyond the concept of an ombudsman.
For the first time in my memory, the urban middle class of India have been represented - as opposed to factions based on religion, caste, race and language. A new platform has been given due recognition - that of the growing, tax-paying, facebook-ing urban demographic which has never been able to dissolve its own lines of religion, caste, race and language.
This is a huge achievement in a country in which nearly every state is governed by a political party which is strictly local and more often than not ethnically and linguistically native. I am extremely optimistic that the next general elections (for the country's Prime Minister) will have corruption, infrastructure and education as some of the platforms rather than being right-wing, left-wing or secular.
I for one (as are many in India) am fearful about the lokpal - primarily because the actual people behind the Anna Hazaare campaign are "professional" non-profit organizations. I would much rather have e-governance as well as absolute and complete transparency on government functioning (for example, Estonia ??)
Let me try to give a perspective on the reality that is faced by most Indians. This is a general analysis and not a position on the Lokpal bill itself.
Corruption at the lower level of bureaucracy:
Corruption/graft is faced by people every day in common functions of their life. The market incentives are there to support graft (low salaries, a huge imbalance in supply and demand - contributed in part due to a very large Indian population, wide disparity in income distributions).
But consider that there are limited or no checks against corrupt officers. We got the Right to Information Act (RTI) recently due to civil activism. RTI enables you to get data from public offices. A lot of times this data is enough to point out instances of corruption.
So you can point out corruption, but when you want somebody to act on it, its so far neigh impossible to see action. Police won't register your case easily, so a common man is left with very little avenue to pursue this further.
RTI activists and whistleblowers experience a lot of hostility. 10 were murdered in 2010 alone for bringing to light scams and corruption cases.
There is a strong erosion of trust from Government and Public offices. The word correctly describing the situation is malaise. Folks are sick and tired of experiencing day to day exploitation. As with any typical malaise, it crept up, slowly and steadily, steeped into our systems.
The bill is seen as hope by a large section of the public as a first step towards fighting corruption. Hence the hundreds of thousands of people out on the street protesting. Peacefully. Not rioting.
<opinion>
I too have concerns with regards to the policing of the Lokpal body. Or who will guard the guards.
But strong public opinion and action on corruption is needed.
</opinion>
There are checks and balances. The Lokpal will be supervised by the cabinet secretary and the election commission. Also, any case against a curropt Lokpal chairperson can be bought in court - and can be removed if found guilty. Its only independent of the government - who its supposed to keep a check on.
The Lokpal bill was initially introduced in the Indian parliament in 1968. 43 years ago. Many attempts were made to make it into a law - always unsuccessfully. Until Anna Hazare whipped the people into a frenzy, went on a fast and essentially blackmailed the parliament. That is why he is called a modern day Gandhi. He successfully used Gandhian techniques to achieve an impossible feat. Not because of some checkered instance from his past.
(Also, Gandhi recruited Indians to become soldiers during WW1 and fight for the British - going against his doctrine of non violence. No one is pure and nothing is black and white.)
These kind of shits happens in politics in every country with some twist.
I had discussion with one of my friend in UK and stated his statement - "UK has faced riots for 15 days and India has peaceful movement for 15 days" earlier these statement used to be reverse.
First, the Lokpal deals only with the Judiciary part of the constitution while both Legislature and Executive parts will be untouched. So it's not an alternative constitution. Even within Judiciary it deals only with officials 'who are facing corruption charges'. In fact Lokpal will be weaker than an income tax officer. A corrupt Lokpal can be removed within two months by the parliament!
Second, no one is questioning the electorate system. But when it comes to an effective anti-corruption law, just saying "vote the right person in the next election" won't cut it in a country rifed with illiteracy, poverty and communism. We should be pragmatic instead of just sticking to textbook definition of democracy.
Third, Gandhian is not someone who behaves exactly like Gandhi. Anyone inspired by Gandhi's principles is a Gandhian. Nehru was called Gandhian even though he declared wars.
I am not sure if you understand the complete situation. Presently, the body that looks into the corruption cases against politicians and other Govt. workers is directly under the control of Govt. (you see the conflict of interest). The idea of lokpal is more than 40 years old, which says that the person/body investigating these corruption cases should be an independent body and (at least theoretically) should not be under the control of those being investigated. I don't see any problem with having a Lokpal. Of course, the lokpal can be corrupt. But atleast a non-corrupt Lokpal can investigate freely. Whereas, right now investigating Polititians and Govt. works is nearly impossible.
Totally agree. It seems like a media driven phenomenon. Incompetence is a bigger problem than corruption in India. The systemic problems that face the society need ambition, will and technology. This solution is too simplistic for me to be taken seriously.
> Incompetence is a bigger problem than corruption in India. The systemic problems that face the society need ambition, will and technology.
This is the elephant in the room when it comes to India. There is just a huge amount of apathy amongst the people. A simple example is how much produce rots to waste as a result of poor transportation/refrigeration. There are so many processes crying out to be optimized.
As a US-born NRI, there are so many things that I find appalling that my family in India doesn't even notice. It's like they've been desensitized to all of these issues over the years to the point where they're not even really considered problems.
A lot of people believe the difference between India and China is that China's autocratic government allows them to modernize and improve their country much faster, but the truth is that democracy can be compatible with rapid modernization if the people are willing to work together. Even in China, the government is ruled by a large number of people - no one would say that Hu Jintao has a level of power even close to that of a dictator. The real difference is that the Chinese government has labored long and hard to improve living conditions for hundreds of millions of its citizens (though it has also brutally mistreated several million of them) while the Indian government has been sitting around twiddling its fingers.
Corruption directly results in inefficient systems.
Consider a road from A to B. Ideally you would want a strait line, but if someone owns land that would benefit from being near a road then you just bend the path a little and suddenly his land is worth more. As long as the person drawing that line has more to gain from bribes than an efficient road you are going to build a lot of odd looking roads. Taken to the extreme and you get roads that are less useful and more costly to build and maintain because they are longer.
Exactly. Why is it that the smaller national highways and a few of the biggest airports only got nationalized recently (i.e., the past 2 years)? It's most likely that that the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi temporarily broke the spell of apathetic stupor. (or perhaps this only applies to South India, in which case that would be sad yet telling, since South India is the home to most of India's IT sector.)
India's high population and smaller landmass (--> higher pop dens) requires innovative, planned, coordinated strategies to conserve resources. To say that India is a democracy does not mean that it is a meritocracy. It still seems to be more like a feudal-like hierarchy inherited from the British, which itself was usurped and adapted from the feudal monarchies before. Most post-colonial states wrestle with issues of being too top-down, despotic, nepotistic.
Laws are only really worth anything if they can be adjudicated and enforced. What good is a law that no one respects? Everything is all about institutions and what they do, so celebrating a law might be premature since it's only 1/3 of the entire end goal -- you need the judiciary and the executive on the same page and working, too.
Corruption exists for historical reasons and because the Govt has not had the spine to go after pilfered assets and corrupt officials as it was perceived as too big a problem.
Similar problem existed in Hong Kong and was solved using similar means as this bill.
The reflection argument only works when the people have visibility into the government machine, which did not exist until recently, with greater mass media, RTI and even youtube/facebook etc. Even people from villages are on these channels.
The janlokpal bill is as good an example of people shaping their government as anything else.
@GeneTraylor agreed. in fact fully agree. But you need to start from somewhere. I am seeing whole movement in couple of ways.
1. Awake lost politician that they can take citizen granted. Even citizen has shown that they are educated enough (because even more than 5 million people have participated across the country over last 12-15 days but not a single violence and public property damage as in other agitations happens in India)
2. Aware about law which is about to come. This is a big deal first time people are talking about laws in details and when it comes to implementation they know how to deal with it. (In India we have "Right to Information" but very less people use it because they not fully aware even it have the simplest structure.)
3. Interested in politics - This is the root problem in India. New generation which is so called better educated than their old one is not taking much interest in politic. These kind of movement make few good leaders as other movements.
As far as my knowledge it was a biggest non-political movement in India so far.
Anti-corruption bodies work well in countries with a strong history of rule of law and stable democracy, because there's a pool of incorruptibles to draw from, and the elites have a mutual interest in appointing them. Here in Australia we have a bunch of them at state level: ICAC, CCC, OPI etc.
Sometimes they turn out to harbour bad apples; but eventually those people too are discovered and removed. Recently a former manager in the National Crime Commission (a powerful anti-organised crime body) was charged, tried, convicted and imprisoned for colluding with criminals to import drugs.
The problem might be that the people with the power to appoint the guards are themselves only going to appoint their friends. It's a chicken and egg dilemma, but worth struggling with. Eventually there's a tipping point where corruption becomes the abnormality and everyone accepts independent arbitration. It can unleash enormous prosperity, which Indians deserve as much as anyone.
but the citizens of any nation are responsible for corruption. Their leaders aren't alien beings who have descended from planet Z to rule upon their country
I have been thinking about it for few weeks now and was somehow not convinced that by having an anti corruption bill passed would suddenly make significant changes.
This will be extremely unpopular over here, but the citizens of any nation are responsible for corruption.
This isn't like pork-barrel spending where the voters care a lot about ending it but care more about protecting spending in their own district. Nor is it like American-style corruption where every voter understands that money buys influence, except in the case of their own congressmen, whom they believe to be honest people who are forced to take corporate money so they can survive in Washington and do some good. That kind of corruption flows both ways: the corrupt congressman uses his power to reel in undeserved favors and unnecessary spending for his constituents. It's a quid pro quo. Americans are conflicted. I'm sure Indians are similarly conflicted about the corruption that brings services or economic growth to their districts, but they are not conflicted about paying bribes or having public property appropriated by government officials. They are also not conflicted about corrupt relationships between corporations and politicians where the politicians' constituents are the ones who get screwed. This is not a problem of incentives. This is a problem of investigation and enforcement. Do you expect citizens to punish politicians themselves, vigilante-style, on the basis of rumors that have never been investigated?
The disruption to the constitutional balance of power is something I take seriously, but the accounts of what the Lokpal Bill actually does vary widely. From my understanding, the Lokpal resembles a special prosecutor's office. It has the power and resources to investigate, and it has the power to bring cases to the courts. When it is said that various government offices are "under the purview" of the Lokpal, it just means they can be investigated and prosecuted, just like any official in the United States government can be investigated (and almost all of them can be prosecuted.)
Now, I could have been misled about what the Lokpal actually is, but I have to say that its supporters have been more specific about the limits of its powers, while the detractors have been very vague and hand-wavy. They say it sets up a new branch of government and disrupts the separation of powers, but the same was said about the United States' independent counsel (the most famous of whom was Kenneth Starr:)
I think we take it for granted in the United States that if an official is breaking the law (and not just enjoying legal corruption) that some agency, probably more than one, will have the authority, the resources, and an official mandate to investigate the crime. As far as I know, that's all the Lokpal Bill is trying to accomplish. I don't see what's wrong with that.
I think this forum perhaps would understand best what is the real cause of corruption in India. In a place like Singapore an entrepreneur need to take around 7 permission to start construction, in India you need to take 30+. Is the way to reduce corruption is to bring a new inspector who will looks after all those 30+ permission processes or to reduce these permission to 5 ?
Indian government employes 3 million employees out of which 1.4 million are employed purely by railways. Does it make sense for the Ombudman to appoint 7000 inspectors to look after Indian Railways corruption or Should the railways try to thin its staff by outsourcing most of it's processes?
Does it make sense to waster tax-payer's money on an ombudsman inspector to look after corruption in a loss making government factory that manufactures soap ? (Yes, in India government runs soap companies). Or should it get rid of that factory itself ?
If you want to start a hotel you need to take around 300 permissions our of which most needs to be renewed yearly. One permission for example is from the 'weights and measurements' department which certifies that all the weighing scales in your hotel are up-to the standards. No one bothers to get their scales checked they just send a packet of money to 'weights and measures' department and get permissions.
The root cause of corruption in India is not in lack of some laws but the policies which government has put in deliberately to ensure that politicians are in position to control every aspect of it's people's life.
In software terms I would say Indian government is a case of bad architectural layout. You have a zillion components tightly coupled with another zillion components which are affecting performance of the system. If someone wants to be efficient he has to hack the system. Adding another layer over this bad architecture does not solve any porblem, you need to fix the basic architecture first. Then talk about ombudsman.
It is not adding another layer, it is refactoring the system based on good evidence that this has worked before.
People talking about real cause and root cause are welcome to start a movement to solve that. When you are able to convince a few friends and gather a few followers, please let us know.
What is there in those videos besides some Anna-glorification ?
And to talk about supporters, yes, there are a large number of people that think like me, it is just that they are not firing from shoulders of an good intentioned old man.
What he is actually saying is that people are supporting Anna without necessarily understanding the reasons why - then he proceeds to lay down the reasons how we got to this situation after 43 years of the bill and the recent increase in public pilfering.
Also given is the example of the cleanup of Hong Kong corruption using an independant body with powers.
Interesting links. But the constitution does not say government should be small. And flip side of great business freedom is potential for greater exploitation. So you'd likely face headwinds as strong as Anna is facing if you were in his position.
Constitution does not say government should be small but common sense does. Also, wasting taxpayer's money over soap factories and airlines (not even 5% of India's population uses them) is also exploitation which has lead to abject poverty. A million children in India die every year just because of lack of food.
An open economy is certainly not free from faults but it at least helps us get rid of some basic problems. The new problems that arise that need to be addressed then. Our primary objective must to end that acute poverty which then leads to people selling their votes for a bag of rice.
As rightly pointed out by Mr. Hazare this is only half the battle won.
Part of the second battle should be simplifying the bureaucracy - paperwork, transparency, easily interpretable procedures that are available for general public and infrastructure to monitor the efficiency of the bureaucracy - how many cases people brought, what was the resolution time, why was it not resolved etc.
Because the above are the main reasons general public becomes willing to be participate in corruption - the arcane, unclear, irrelevant processes that lead to confusion which the bureaucracy uses for their benefit. If they attack that issue and make the bureaucracy responsible and accountable that will go long way in reducing corruption and making the general public happier.
That's the harder part though. Without it people will continue to suffer.
There will be corruption as long as there are people who want to make a quick buck without working hard. We can only try to reduce and discourage it.
The problem in India is lack of development and education and poverty. As long as these issues are not addressed we will never touch the root of the problem, and will be just trying to treat the symptoms.
It's a complicated problem - you're right in pointing out that part of it is education and poverty / lack of opportunities for every class of people. But again the bureaucracy is part of the problem - Government's schemes, aid doesn't reach the poor etc.
In that sense making the bureaucracy accountable, transparent is the first right step to resolve the other problems.
Yes, that is right, we have to make things more transparent. The RTI was one act towards that goal. Though, this particular act in the current form is not the right path in my opinion. People elected into the Jan Lokpal will be no different from people elected into parliament. There is no foolproof way to prevent them from corrupted themselves.
Creating an extra-body which itself can act as the police and be outside of the parliament and be a concentration of power not elected by the democratic process would be the wrong way to go I feel.
I feel the people have good intention behind coming up with this act, but that alone doesn't mean that this law is the right thing to do. We are trying to solve the symptom and not the disease. Corruption is just the symptom created by the way our society and culture functions, we will have to fix the root cause to fix corruption. I don't think increasing punitive measures is going to curb corruption in the big scale. Corruption as a whole is weaved into our social fabric. We would need a lot more than just a law to remove it.
For a country full of software engineers and business process engineers, India's pathetic bureaucracy has not been in any mood to modernize. Most modernization efforts have been to buy a couple of PCs load up Windows and wait for magic to somehow happen. It has not.
Open accounting, transparent gvernance etc were supposed to have happened by now, they haven't. The bureaucracy is also extremely dismissive of anything industry suggests as a better way of doing things. Anything that devolves their ability to sit on approvals or wield power is shot down immediately. The existing bureaucracy is a waste of tax payer money and an example of redundant waste.
Even Slovenia now has bench-marked, transparent and open accounting systems.
I'm going to admit my ignorance here...I understood very little of what this article said and what it's relevance is. I don't follow Indian politics, so I do not know very much about how the government works, what the Lokpal bill is, or what it's meant to do. Or who "Anna" is.
Maybe somebody would be kind enough to post a tl;dr? I understand that there are problems with corruption in India but don't know any of the background details.
Surely it's going to be part of history. Besides there are being RTI and other laws, it was much needed. This bill will be independent and answerable to people not government. Hope it helps for good.
Since Standing Committee is not autonomous and since there's a strong political opportunism in giving support to this ombudsman bill, it'll most likely be passed without much difficulty.
We can at best hope that it is going to turn out well, in the end.
Anna Hazare is being hastily compared to Gandhi. Before this he had good credentials, i.e. was fairly well known in India, but he was just one-among-many-equals (not even first among equals) of social activists.
The positive though is that, the three most important people around him, also have got good credentials. Okay two at least (Kiran Bedi and Arvind Kejriwal). About the third - Mr. Bhushan - not much was known earlier.
Arvind Kejriwal in particular had worked very hard in the activism space, being one of the key guys behind acts such as RTI. (It may interest the HN community more, that he happens to be a product of IIT in India - the most reputable tech institution over here. )
But this sudden burst of 'I-want-results-now' sort of hyper activism. Has left an admirer like me confused at best. Confused, as to whether the good guys indeed are still on the right track. Or have broken down.
Broken down, akin to a website owner, who after years of toiling to build traffic the clean and hard way, have suddenly resorted to black hat SEO.
(If the analogy is not obvious, I mean, just like dirty and unethical SEO, may be easy to build traffic. Similarly fast to death is an easy way to build frenzy. Not easy always, but easy once in a while, and this technique was being applied the first time in front of new TV media).
And just being good people and having good intentions is not enough. You have to be a lot careful with these things. As they say 'With power comes more .....'.
Want to recount an anecdote to make a point: Recently I had a reason to visit a village in northern India. I won't polish my words here - The experience was ugly. The village was very dirty. The people ultra lazy. Open drains all over the place smelling bad. People just sitting idle. Houses in the state of decay, but no body is working to rebuild them. Electricity comes only in the night, that of course is not their problem.
My family and me had planned to stay for 2 days there. But had to rush back the same day, as I could not simply just get myself to use the dirty toilet there. (Call me whatever - snobbish, unfeeling, uncaring, etc. but I am being brutally honest here)
So a thought occurred to me. That its not corruption-freedom they need now urgently. Its basic education (for their kids) and perhaps some inspiration (and some training also won't hurt) in life to get up from their haunches and start doing some work.
I may sound like a right wing capitalist here. But that's just a label, and my anon status gives me the liberty to write freely. And BTW, in general I am left leaning for various things - have followed Paul Krugman's writings for past few years. And also, I am a big fan of the Mahatma Gandhi. (I needed to say this, to give my fellow Indians, a background of where I am coming from. So before even you start getting to abusing me, please at-least bother to understand me)
On the matter of abuse, I feel sorry for Manmohan Singh our PM. People just don't have any broader perspective. And can just so easily be swayed from one side to another. Not long back - i.e. until about two years back - he was being hailed as a great person, who ushered India into liberalization of the 90s. Which allowed the GDP to become 8% from and liberated it from the Hindu growth rate of 3-4%. And allowed a great Indian middle class to emerge, etc. etc.
But now, the very same people, are just after his blood all the time. I was almost fearing that the poor guy does not get a heart attack, from so much pressure, while every body else is worried about Anna's health (no disrespect to him either).
Now on corruption: People don't even see the irony of what they are saying and supporting. In the past two years lots of scams have been uncovered - CWG & 2G-spectrum-allocation the most prominent of them.
IMO two things that were most instrumental for the uncovering were: 1) The RTI (right to information) law passed only few years back and 2) the CAG reports. Powerful personalities went to jail (still are in jail) and many others still live in fear.
So is that a good thing or a bad thing? Meaning, will people would have been better off if these were not uncovered or are people better off now that they are in fact uncovered.
The least the uncovering of these scams tells, is that the system is working. So one would expect that people will work towards empowering the current set of things (laws/institutions) which have proven that they are very effective. And not indulge in hyper-activism, the outcome of which is at best unpredictable. Even enact more laws, who is stopping.
But no sir. We want some more blood. And we want it now. So what, if the movement or agitation, call it whatever you like, shames India into looking like a Arab country. (Some lunatic journo, surely compared this with an 'Arab Spring' ... I almost heard him. )
Silent evolutionary things, are much more powerful, than a revolutionary change. The latter also can be helpful. But people leading them have to be sure. Really really sure. I honestly am still confused, at best. I still don't doubt the intentions of Kejriwal and Ms. Bedi. I hope they are guided well by their inner beings...
And did I miss an Obama like orator, to articulate the government's perspective on things.
EDIT: No disrespect to Arab countries either. My remark is only intended for the rulers (kings) of those countries, which have obviously been abusing the populace, who have now very bravely gathered the will to fight them.
I'm sorry but you sound very presumptuous - you could'nt bring yourself to stay a single day in situations where people have stayed their lifetime - or clean the toilet yourself - and you presume to dictate what is best for them ?
About the shift in perceptions about Manmohan Singh: a person who is an A player in one position may well be a C player in a different position. It is a fact that despite RTI which only affected the lower levels of the govt, the corruption on the higher levels has only increased in the last few years. The oratory you miss also affects the effectiveness of the government itself.
I think if you are interested in the subject it behoves you find out more about the what and why before sounding off confusedly on the topic. More like Kejriwal and less like Manmohan.
I agree with you on your second point. A person good for situation A may not be good for the position B. But that doesn't give a license to rubbish all of the person's achievements. As people at large seem to be doing the past few days.
You caught me in one of my several weaknesses (your first point). But you must at-least acknowledge that I said it myself.
Don't agree with your last para. Now you are presuming, I have not made an effort. I did not read the bill. But I made efforts - right from looking up wikipedia a few months back on 'Ombudsman' and many other things (articles/views etc.) ...
And second point in your last para: Please distinguish between ambivalence or (admission of confusion) regarding somebody else's action and accusing me of being confused. I spent 45 minutes, trying to articulate my views (it did tax my articulation capabilities) and re-read it before posting. I am not confused at all about what I am saying. I am only not sure, if what's happening is making sense in the right way. My hunch is that it does not.
Well props to you for truthfulness. I don't think anyone is rubbishing the PM personally.
I was reading the Progress Principle today. It makes the point that setbacks have an outsized influence on one's mental makeup - much more than progress does. Check it out.
What corruption leads to is a set of daily setbacks to individuals. On the one hand the govt says this problem is impossible to solve. On the other the protestors say they have researched the issue and here is a way to solve it.
Which one do you pick and support ? It's a no contest to me.
I may have been ambivalent in April. But now in Aug, seeing that the govt has watered down their version of the bill so much that their lokpal won't even accept allegations of corruption from the general public ... it is clear they have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. That made me more interested in the topic and I read the bill and both sides of the argument. My conclusion is that this is the chance to grab. Even if it reduces corruption by a few percentage points it will be a victory, and will release energy for the tasks that you mention so urgently need to get done.
I am impressed that you read the bill, and then decided to support it.
I did not like the process of getting it done, for one thing. We are having this discussion in a much more civil way. But please look across the Internet (just a twitter search on 'Anna' will give you all colors of tweets). Particularly, in the earlier part of the fast. People are ready to bulldoze/dominate/abuse others...
The 'I am Anna', 'You are Anna' irritates me. No body can have such a steep rise in stock, in just four months ...
Wearing a black hat for a moment. The big suspicion I have is:
1) Anna was used as a tool by Mr. Kejriwal and Ms. Bedi. This is very different than what Gandhiji would have allowed to be done of himself.
2) Anna also did it primarily for fame a retired activist, getting his time in the sun at last ...
Now again wearing my grey hat: I do believe that Arvind Kejrival and Kiran Bedi are good people, basically. But good people also can be misled (they have to be more careful.)
I think, my note above is written in a sober tone. I have just hinted (or even stopped before that) some of my fears/concerns without going into some specific dark doubts that I have illustrated in this comment.
People wake up..!! There are two kinds of bribing/corruption. In most countries you will see officers take bribe for not doing something that comes in their authority or that is out of their authority. But only in Great India we can see that officers take bribe just for doing their job which they get paid for. Jan Lok Pal bill is the leash that the people of Great India have got to keep all the officers tied.
They can be corrupt, but then according to the proposed law every citizen will have a right to go to Supreme Court against the LokPal. This will surely be a deterrent.
I think the constitution also has a process mentioned, on how to remove an MP, but that system is not working well. So how are you sure that this system will work. Why are we not urging them to fix the former system, instead of adding more.
Apart from cabinet secretary Lokpal is answerable to Election Commission which is autonomous. Along with this, the election process of a Lokpal itself will reduce chances of corruption.
So you advocate genetically modified human beings to be created without the corruption gene to run an anti-corruption institution?
Get off the high horses. It's all run by the people after all - you just hope to create a good balance of power and try to put better, educated people in places of power. There is no magic wand to suddenly rid of all malaise for you while you sit still and criticize. That's what the bill is trying to do.
Any constitution is a fine balance of power, a body like this which concentrates power outside of the constitution without carefully thought out checks and balances can be used to deliver the coup de grace to democracy. After all who guards the guards?
This will be extremely unpopular over here, but the citizens of any nation are responsible for corruption. Their leaders aren't alien beings who have descended from planet Z to rule upon their country. They were and are chosen from amongst them, and in a representative democracy it is they who choose them. You might argue that the vote itself is an ineffective tool, and you will be right, but it does offer us the opportunity to ruthlessly edit people from power. At the end it is the culture of a country that shapes a leader to a great deal. They are simply mirrors of society, but we seem to run away from that fact.
The same goes for bureaucrats and any other malaise that plagues society. They are from amongst us, and although the blame may be greater on some shoulders, it is borne by all of us.
The inherent assumption is that the people in this organization will be somehow pure, sans biases, and without malice. It makes me doubt this because human nature being human nature, sooner or later someone creative is going to come along and will convince people to side with him/her and play this unbalanced system to achieve control. It's not a matter of if, but when.
Of course, I might be wrong and this bill might be a carefully calculated with the calculus of power to be perfectly neutral, but I somehow doubt that given the sheer PR and the herd mentality that seems to surround this. For example the man portrayed as a Gandhian whipped drunks in his home town in the name of "social progress", how is that behavior Gandhian? (I'm not questioning if the behavior is right or wrong, I'm simply asking how can someone who whips people be called the modern Gandhi?)
I think that something rather interesting is going on over here, and that the true nature of this bill and the organization it will create will be apparent as time passes on.
I honestly hope that it's genuine, and it won't lead to a calculated attempt to gain power, but I wouldn't bet on it.