Recent unfolding of series of scams has become major public concern. Exposures of 2G spectrum allocation, Commonwealth Games, allocation of oilfield of Godawari basin, cash for votes, allocation of mines in Karnataka etc have shown how thousands of crores worth of public resources have been illicitly cornered by a section of ministers, corporate and bureaucrats. In a country like India, where millions of people still suffer from acute poverty, hunger and lack of socio-economic opportunities, the pillage of public resources through corruption is crime of very serious nature. Apart from affecting economic development, accumulation of ill gotten wealth through corruption is widening the inequalities and ruining the moral fabric of our society.
What is worse, tainted ministers have been allowed to remain in office for months and the investigations manipulated, in order to obstruct the courses of justice. While corruption in high places has been a feature of our political system for many decades, what has emerged as a dominant trend in the post-liberalization period is a thorough distortion of the policy-making process at the highest levels of the government. A nexus of big corporate, politicians and bureaucrats have matured under the neoliberal regime and is threatening to subvert our democracy.
The battle against corruption can be achieved only through a comprehensive reform of our political, legal, administrative and judicial system and not through a single or piece-meal measures.
The establishment of an effective Lokpal institution is one such measure. This needs to be complemented by other measures like grievance redressal set-up for citizens, based on legislation; a National Judicial Commission to oversee the higher judiciary; electoral reforms to check the use of money power in elections; urgent steps for reform our tax system to plug loopholes and unearth black money much of which is stashed in offshore bank accounts and tax havens; firm steps to break the big business-politician-bureaucrats nexus. Only a comprehensive systemic reform can effectively curb corruption.
No comments:
Post a Comment