FLAWS ABORT CURBS ON GRAFT – Bleed My Country Bleed : Shantonu Sen
FLAWS ABORT CURBS ON GRAFT
Two National newspapers ,both Delhi editions dated seventh September 2015 have significant head lines on the subject of graft. Millennium Post reads ” IT TAKES EIGHT YEARS TO FINALIZE MAJOR GRAFTCASE: CVC” and Hindustan Times reads ” ANTI-GRAFT LAW SECTION TO PROTECT HONEST BABUS.” These two headlines and the assurance ,by those providing political leadership ,that corruption is cancer and will be eliminated do not match. That then is our “tale (saga of laws of anti-corruption)told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing .”
There was virtually no specific law in India to investigate, try and jail the corrupt under the British Colonial Rule till the 1940s. Corruption of the British by the British for the British was the rule. Shashi Tharor has only lately exposed its innards as he only can. He told them in Oxford the bitter truth a few months ago. When they started in India this country’s share of the world economy was 24% and when they left India it was at 4%. Corruption was their norm , clean governance was an aberration. When corruption impacted their Second World War efforts it was only then the Viceroy and the Government of India sought to make corrupt practices punishable by imposing fines and jail sentences. They promulgated an Ordinance, Criminal Law Amendment Ordinance 1944 making several corrupt practices criminal They left in 1947 but not before their ordinance against corruption helped to send, a couple of ‘native’f officers of the Indian Civil Service and those businessmen who in tow with Indian civil servants drained government coffers and thereby jeopardized their war efforts, to jail.
Since then this 1944 Ordinance has become an Act. The parliament has passed the Prevention of Corruption Act in 1964 replacing a 1947 law against Corruption. The law has been given teeth by several amendments since then. But as one can easily surmise the teeth is leaving marks on those who are stung by corrupt practices perpetrated on them. Increasingly time to book the corrupt is becoming longer and longer. The victim is waiting that much longer and suffering inordinately. Add to that the ignominy of the honest babu when the corrupt also succeeds in making him to pay for his corruption. It appears to have been recurring so much that the Government is contemplating an anti graft law to protect them. How ironical! Our anti-corruption law cannot swiftly deal with graft and the honest face graft charges.
Tinkering with the existing graft law is self defeating. Laws, investigation, trial that deliver body blows on the really corrupt swiftly is the need of the time. Unfortunately, no one is there to bell the cat. Bleed My Country Bleed.
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