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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:) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_Counsel 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. |