Is the Prime Minister’s proposal of a debate on the floor of house on all the different versions of the Lokpal Bill sufficient to break the deadlock or is it too little too late. Secondly, what are the full implications of the all party resolution commitment to a final draft of the Lokpal Bill and have they been fully understood?
Q: Do you agree that this is a good step forward?
Dey: Certainly, it’s a very big step forward. There is a reaching out on the basis of saying that everything will be considered and the best amongst the three options that are being debated just now; the best amongst those will also be taken into account. So there shouldn’t be too much argument with that. It’s time to get out of the semantics as it were of whether or not something will come first or later.
Q: Would you say this is a significant concession by the Prime Minister to Anna? Can this be called a significant victory for Anna?
Dey: Absolutely. The victory for Anna is in the making day after day because we have seen continuous movement forward. But as long as Team Anna recognizes that they are willing to accept whatever is good even if it may not be in to their version of the Jan Lokpal Bill then we certainly have a step forward from both sides and we will be able to reach some kind of consensus.
Q: Clearly, this proposal by the Prime Minister won’t meet Anna’s grand demand that his bill must be passed in it’s entirety by the Lok Sabha. How close does it come to meeting his lesser demand that the Jan Lokpal Bill should be introduced in the Lok Sabha?
Mehta: Depends, which way they see it. I am not too sure that the idea of so many bills being debated in parliament will particularly appeal to them. Until now, they said that this was the bill and the only bill. Now with competing bills in parliament there is a possibility that they may not get everything and elements from other bills maybe incorporated.
I hope they have the magnanimity and the wisdom to see that this has been done in the interest of a strong Lokpal Bill rather than just in the interest of the Jan Lokpal Bill. They will have to move beyond the Jan Lokpal Bill and get to the Lokpal Bill.
Q: Do you believe that Anna and his team, specifically Arvind Kejriwal and Prashant Bhushan are in a mood to move beyond their initial focus on the Jan Lokpal Bill to a national Lokpal Bill, which can and should perhaps involve elements of Aruna Roy’s thinking, Jayaprakash Narayan's thinking, maybe the government’s thinking? Are they in a mood to do that or do you think they will stay rigidly by their insistence on the Jan Lokpal Bill?
Guha: I am far away in Bangalore. I am the one person on this show who is not near Delhi and has no intention of going near Delhi. I have no clue as to what they are thinking as I can’t read their minds. These are kind of obsessions about one thing in India. First, it was the nuclear deal which the press was obsessed by for weeks, then it becomes the Indian Premier League, then it becomes something else and now it’s Anna Hazare and his fast.
This is a vast and complex country with many diverse problems of which corruption is only one, albeit a very important one. But when it even comes to corruption, as a historian, the one significant success that India has had in tackling corruption in the last 30 years has to do with railway reservation, which was sold by the user imaginative technology.
So in many ways to tackle corruption, a Lokpal Bill is one, the official use of the technology is second, electoral reform is third. So we have to get into the complex aspects of this and not the frenzy of one man, one issue, one bill, one weak Prime Minister whipped up by the media.
Historian and commentator Ramachandra Guha; co-convener of the national campaign for people’s right to information Nikhil Dey and the Editor-In-Chief of Outlook, Vinod Mehta argue out the issue of the Lokpal Bill with CNBC-TV18's Karan Thappar.
Q: The Prime Minister has proposed a debate on the floor of the house on all the various versions of the Lokpal Bill that are today in the public domain. So that Anna’s Jan Lokpal can be also considered before it is sent to the standing committee. In your eyes, is this a reasonable proposal and a step forward or too little, too late?Guha: It’s a step forward and I hope that it encourages Anna Hazare to end his fast. I hope the national frenzy of different kinds die down. I hope that many other areas of social and public importance that are awaiting and pending discussion in parliament are taken up. I also hope especially that when it comes to the question of corruption, we recognize that’s it’s a multi-faceted problem, that is a multi-pronged approach on which a Lokpal whether Sarkari or Jan can be only one and not necessarily the most important one.
Dey: Certainly, it’s a very big step forward. There is a reaching out on the basis of saying that everything will be considered and the best amongst the three options that are being debated just now; the best amongst those will also be taken into account. So there shouldn’t be too much argument with that. It’s time to get out of the semantics as it were of whether or not something will come first or later.
Q: Would you say this is a significant concession by the Prime Minister to Anna? Can this be called a significant victory for Anna?
Dey: Absolutely. The victory for Anna is in the making day after day because we have seen continuous movement forward. But as long as Team Anna recognizes that they are willing to accept whatever is good even if it may not be in to their version of the Jan Lokpal Bill then we certainly have a step forward from both sides and we will be able to reach some kind of consensus.
Q: Clearly, this proposal by the Prime Minister won’t meet Anna’s grand demand that his bill must be passed in it’s entirety by the Lok Sabha. How close does it come to meeting his lesser demand that the Jan Lokpal Bill should be introduced in the Lok Sabha?
Mehta: Depends, which way they see it. I am not too sure that the idea of so many bills being debated in parliament will particularly appeal to them. Until now, they said that this was the bill and the only bill. Now with competing bills in parliament there is a possibility that they may not get everything and elements from other bills maybe incorporated.
I hope they have the magnanimity and the wisdom to see that this has been done in the interest of a strong Lokpal Bill rather than just in the interest of the Jan Lokpal Bill. They will have to move beyond the Jan Lokpal Bill and get to the Lokpal Bill.
Q: Do you believe that Anna and his team, specifically Arvind Kejriwal and Prashant Bhushan are in a mood to move beyond their initial focus on the Jan Lokpal Bill to a national Lokpal Bill, which can and should perhaps involve elements of Aruna Roy’s thinking, Jayaprakash Narayan's thinking, maybe the government’s thinking? Are they in a mood to do that or do you think they will stay rigidly by their insistence on the Jan Lokpal Bill?
Guha: I am far away in Bangalore. I am the one person on this show who is not near Delhi and has no intention of going near Delhi. I have no clue as to what they are thinking as I can’t read their minds. These are kind of obsessions about one thing in India. First, it was the nuclear deal which the press was obsessed by for weeks, then it becomes the Indian Premier League, then it becomes something else and now it’s Anna Hazare and his fast.
This is a vast and complex country with many diverse problems of which corruption is only one, albeit a very important one. But when it even comes to corruption, as a historian, the one significant success that India has had in tackling corruption in the last 30 years has to do with railway reservation, which was sold by the user imaginative technology.
So in many ways to tackle corruption, a Lokpal Bill is one, the official use of the technology is second, electoral reform is third. So we have to get into the complex aspects of this and not the frenzy of one man, one issue, one bill, one weak Prime Minister whipped up by the media.