Today I read in the newspapers about Anna Hazare's victory in his battle over 'Corruption'. He managed to convince the Government to have a bipartite committee over formulating the Lokpal bill. This Government's willingness will indeed allow to make an effective draft of LokPal bill. But can a bill/law enable a society to arrest corruption?
If law was enough to arrest a social evil, anti-dowry bill would have stopped dowry long time back. Anti-foeticide laws would have arrested the drop of female/male rate. Effective Road traffic laws ( RTO) would have increased the usage of autos and taxis.
However we all know that dowry in different forms is still rampant. Infact various innovative ways are devised to bypass the anti-dowry law ! We also know that Female/male ratios are alarmingly decreasing in the most developed states like Maharashtra. And despite all the regulations of RTO, every day citizens still fight with auto/taxi drivers as they refuse to ply at regulated rates. Infact this auto menace also has created uninintended consequences: Citizens have resorted to using own vehicles which is increasing the road traffic beyond manageable proportions.
We all know that such social evils ( embedded in social fabric) cannot be countered by formulating laws and bills. These laws can become effective only if rest of the supporting elements are also 'synchronised' with it. For instance, female/male ratio can be lowered only by support of another element: Education of women. One can easily see the influence of this Education in female/male ratio of a state like Kerala, where literacy rates are the highest in India.
Therefore, although we must hail Anna Hazare's victory ( that will help us formulate better Anti-Corruption law) we should not stop at formulating just this law. We need to understand the 'dynamics of corruption' and identify those elements which we can influence. We should tie these different elements together: some with law, some with advocacy, some with awareness.
Thomas Friedman's book Lexus and Olive tree has very interesting insights on this phenonomenon, which he calls as 'Kleptocracy'. In short, more thought is needed to identify and 'synchronise' these elements if we are serious about arresting corruption in India. Only good intentions and uncordinated actions will not help.
