The Congress-led UPA-II government has made a seemingly determined effort to meet the deadline set by social activist Anna Hazare to pass the much-debated Lok Pal and Lok Ayuktas Bill in the current winter session of Parliament, by extending the session and piloting its version of the Lok Pal Bill through the Lok Sabha. But on the sticky points raised by Team Anna — bringing the CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) under the adminis-trative control of the Lok Pal, endowing the Lok Pal panel with jurisdiction over corruption within the judiciary, prime minister’s office and class C and D government employees, and including the citizens charter — it has not budged, raising suspicion that the government’s strategy is to present a pusillanimous Bill at the eleventh hour and swiftly enact it into law. This way the Congress leadership would technically meet Anna’s deadline for addressing the burning issue of corruption in government-citizen interaction which has exhausted the tolerance of the public.
Such suspicion is warranted. A dispassionate study of the history of the Lok Pal Bill now awaiting enactment by Parliament after having been controversially examined by the Standing Committee of the ministry of home affairs (with 17 dissenting notes), clearly indicates that the first private member’s Bill to appoint a Lok Pal (ombudsman) was introduced in Parliament in 1968 and subsequently on at least half a dozen occasions without being enacted.
Therefore it’s quite obvious that there’s deep-seated anti-pathy within the political class as a whole against the very idea of an independent Lok Pal (and state-level Lok Ayuktas) who can swiftly and fearlessly investigate and adjudicate charges of corruption against politicians and complicit bureaucrats who taking full advantage of the confused socialist ideology of the post-independence Indian State, have transformed into a giant 18 million strong neta-babu kleptocracy which has the nation in a stranglehold. Simply stated, this unholy kleptocracy which has enriched itself beyond ordinary imagination through exercise of vast discretionary powers without accountability, has too much to lose by way of extorted bribes and kickbacks conservatively estimated at Rs.100,000 crore per year, to allow truly indep-endent and effective Lok Pal and Lok Ayuktas to function.
For this reason all right-thinking citizens who have some idea of the sheer scale and effrontery of the neta-babu kleptocracy which is draining the marrow and spirit of the population, should unreservedly support Anna Hazare’s committed and overdue demand for a wholly independent Lok Pal with full administrative control over the CBI and power to investigate, prosecute and sentence all Central government ministers and employees with the Lok Ayuktas in the states similarly empowered, subject to judicial review.
Admittedly, the draft Bill proposed by Team Anna may not be perfect. But any glitches and anomalies in this well-intentioned Bill conceptualised by a social reformer of unimpeachable credentials, can be ironed out by way of amendments dictated by experience. After all Lok Pal Act won’t be written in stone.
State government colleges need urgent reform
The pathetic condition of higher education in India detailed in our end-of-the-year cover story last month which highlighted that Delhi University — India’s best multi-disciplinary university — is ranked a lowly no.398 in the QS World University Rankings, and is unranked in the Times Higher Education global league table, has aroused neither indignation nor defence of the country’s patently crumbling higher education system. The rot has spread so wide and deep that the dominant sentiment within the ivory towers of Indian academia is of helplessness and despair.
Against this backdrop some grounded and sensible perspectives about reforming higher education emerged at a colloquium held in Bangalore on December 23 to discuss ‘Higher Education in the 12th Five Year Plan’. According to Dr. R. Govinda, vice chancellor of the National University of Educational Planning and Administration, Delhi, current obsession with creating world class universities and higher education institutions has resulted in the neglect of state government-run colleges which admit 90 percent of the students entering tertiary education. Too much emphasis on establishing a few world-class universities is tantamount to “beautifying the façade when the inside of the house is crumbling,” opined Govinda.
As any industry leader or businessman will readily testify, the quality of graduates emerging from the overwhelming majority of India’s 31,000 colleges is pathetic and sharply pushes up the induction and training costs of India Inc. Curiously, the fact that Indian industry has arguably the highest training costs worldwide with IT majors such as TCS, Infosys and Wipro running university scale training establishments and incurring per capita training costs which are several multiples of government subsidies plus tuition fees per graduate, doesn’t seem to disturb government, academics, or indeed India Inc itself.
This mindset requires early burial and determined efforts need to be made to shape and ready college students for industry and business rather than clerical jobs in government, which seems to be the objective of contemporary collegiate education. Quite clearly there’s urgent need to raise the bar of collegiate education — particularly in the 285 state government-funded universities countrywide — where infrastructure deficiencies are painfully apparent, curriculums are obsolete and almost completely divorced from the needs of India Inc, and the quality of faculty is plainly embarrassing. Given that almost Rs.100,000 crore per year of taxpayers’ money is spent on higher education institutions, right-thinking members of society can no longer turn a blind eye to the accelerating erosion of public confidence in their degrees and certification.
One hopes that the top priority of the proposed National Commission for Higher Education & Research (NCHER) which has been given the mandate to restructure and radically shake up higher education, will be reform and rejuvenation of languishing state government arts, science and commerce colleges whose certificates are in danger of being wholly devalued by India Inc.