Lokpal billboard: ‘Who’ll define civil society?’

Sibal and other government representatives on the Lokpal panel are quick to say that Anna Hazare and his team represent a miniscule portion of the civil society and hence cannot be taken at face value. The irony is that this government wants to hastily finish the whole process, though without a consensus, and take the credit for ever having such a bill and put in place a Lokpal who would basically be a Jokepal as it is derived. The MPs are uncomfortable in parting with their legal immunity, which explains a great Indian proverb: Chor ki daadhi mein tinka.
—Prashant Udupa, Thane

Going by the Congress party’s claim that the RSS has fuelled the movement against corruption, every citizen of India must applaud the RSS. If the Congress cannot accept civil society members and their draft, why should we accept the NAC’s draft which is chaired by Sonia Gandhi and members handpicked by her? Secondly, if nobody is above Parliament, why should we accept the Constitution, considering it has been amended more than 100 times to give a Parliamentarian for misuse?
—Annada Prasad Udgata, Thane

It is heartening to see awareness against corruption in our country where we know that a majority of the urban population is corrupt in one way or the other. After the start of the Lokpal Bill agitation, everyone has been thinking that its passing will banish corruption from the country without any efforts from individuals to avoid acts of corruption. Civil society members should request their followers to take an oath not to indulge in acts of corruption. Otherwise, the Lokpal Bill will also fail the way the scores of other anti-corruption departments have failed to curb the evil of
corruption.
—SK Aggarwal, via email

It is highly condemnable that the so-called civil society members have been demanding a kilometre while being given a metre after harping on the PM’s inclusion under the purview of the Lokpal Bill. One would like to point out to them that all our previous prime ministers had been above board, with one of them, the diminutive Lal Bahadur Shastri, rising to great heights by resigning immediately after the railway accident at Ariyalur in Tamil Nadu. Nobody has raised a finger against our present PM. So why should one suspect that future PMs would be corrupt and so needed to be brought within the ambit of the Lokpal?
—Dr V Subramanyan, Thane

It is high time we defined the term ‘civil society’. The Anna group claims to be the representatives of civil society. I don’t think so. It is the electronic and print media that have labeled and projected them as such. In the latest draft of the Lokpal Bill, it has been suggested by them that “five members of the search committee should be from civil society”. Strangely, civil society has not been defined in the definition clauses of the latest version of the draft Lokpal Bill. In an earlier version (1.8), it was suggested by them that the selection committee itself shall comprise two Magsaysay Award winners of Indian origin. Arvind Kejriwal, Kiran Bedi and Anna Hazare are Magsaysay award winners who also call themselves members of civil society. Is it not unfair to gain backdoor entry for power and run a kind of parallel government?
—Manju Lamba, via email

More than 27% of our elected leaders are suspected or are out on bail for major criminal offences. As per the Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR), a non-governmental organisation, 150 of the 543 Parliamentarians have criminal charges against them. This information makes me shudder. What if one of these becomes the next prime minister, defence minister, foreign minister or finance minister? How can we trust it to give us a strong anti-corruption bill? If the civil society does not let go of its ‘chalta hai’ attitude, our very existence may be in danger.
—Sandeep Goswami, via email