I have taken same points of Rushabh and expressed my counter-thoughts on it.
1. My Question to Arvind Kejriwal. Who is "civil society" and who appointed you to represent it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arvind_Kejriwal
(Read the first paragraph, rest of the article you can read later.)
Did anyone appointed him for activating India's Right to Information movement? I am sure there would have been lot of activists with him, but he got Magsaysay award for leading it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_society
(Read first summary, Definition and Robert D. Putnam's argument in section Democracy)
Summary states what ideally civil society is.
As long as I understand, civil society in this context is anything/ anyone other than the government/ opponent party (parliamentary body) who works towards well being of society.
I think, there should not be an issue of election then. Also Rushabh himself have mentioned how the elections are in his second point.
The above mentioned work itself shows that Mr. Kejriwal is one of the top candidate for this.
2. Lok Pal will not change the abuse of power by politicians.
Rushabh have mentioned about RTI and how it helped in exposing scams in this point.
We all have already read the contribution of Mr. Kejriwal for this.
Lok Pal will not change the abuse of power by politicians.
It won't remove, but can certainly reduce it. It will keep tap on, thus will be back of mind of politicians. They surely will think 10 times before surrendering to curruption.
The problem is that the law enforcement and investigative bodies are not independent enough and the Lok Pal cannot solve this.
Lokpal in some sense if not totally, propose to solve this issue only. If you read it carefully it says
Lokpal institution will cover all government ministers, officers at centre including Prime Minister (and if not mistaken justice of supreme court too). The whole idea is to make this independant of law enforcement and investigative bodies so there will be little interference.
Considering for a while that Lok Pal will not change the abuse of power by politicians, still two common questions comes to mind.
- Why these politician are so much fearing to this, and why don't they just put it up as it is proposed by Anna and fellows.
- Why it took 42 years for this.
3. The elite and middle class are participants and beneficiaries of a corrupt system.
Agree on this point.
But again currupt system is like a water which flows and filters from top to bottom. We all know what is at the top here, the government system.
It's like a chain, Lok Pal keeps tap on government - government keeps tap on corporate and other related bodies - in turn keeps tap on society and individual.
4. The "rang-de-basanti" crowd if fickle and represents only 0.1%.
Celebrity, well personally I don't care.
Media done the same thing as, many of our facebookians and twitterites did by status updates. If not totally but to some extent, it was effect of media visuals of Tehran and Libiya protest. Circus is the usual thing which they do but we can ignore it for positive things.
5. The positivity is a good sign.
No differences, except I also see Lok Pal bill as positive. The implementation will be of prime importance.
Thanks for writing back. Regarding Kejriwal, he may be a good activist but I doubt if he can win an election. If you notice, apart from the activists themselves, the people supporting this movement are all bisleri drinking elite. These people are there because of the glamour. Where were they when farmers were driven to suicide and thousands were displaced in the Narmada valley or slums of Mumbai?
ReplyDeleteI have no problem if Kejriwal stands for elections. I would most probably vote for him too. Like someone tweeted, if you wanted to be a part of this committee representing civil society, how would you go about. It's an arbitrary process. If you want to represent civil society in the parliament, there is a
clear process of election.
Regarding the bill itself, unless we have efficient investigative agencies, no point registering complaints. The police and CBI have to be reformed. You cannot improve quality of institutions by adding another institution.
But it's a good thing is that this has generated a lot of positive debate... I am sure only good can come out of it :)
Rushabh