Gaps in perception of India's anti-corruption movement as seen in the U.S. media and by Indian public opinion

04/10/2009

India's Congress government version of events presents it an issue of constitutional sovereignty. Indian public opinion sees it as truly an issue of controlling widespread corruption. Freedom of the press and freedom of assembly are guaranteed in India by the constitution and is exercized continuously since 1947. Corruption at all levels in India in the delivery of public services and in the development of infrastructure has to be experienced to be fully grasped. It acts as a perpetual tax on the middle class and the poor. One has to carefully read the draft of the anticorruption bill drafted by the Congress government, and understand how things function locally today, to realize that it is designed to make little difference in the current state of things. Designed that way because it is a silent but no less explicit intent of the government, political parties, the bureaucracy and interests that have advantages with the existing system, to preserve the status quo. Activist Hazare's bill is designed to give the anti corruption body called a Lokpal the powers it needs to be effective. The prime minister could be exempted but the bureaucracy at all levels and members of parliament and state legislatures if immune to this kind of oversight, would in a developing country with the local conditions of India, render it meaningless. Because this is where the corruption resides. Limits of overreach by the Lokpal come from the body simply acting as a referral system which sends the cases to the judiciary. In doing so constitutional powers are actually vested in the judiciary and the Supreme Court as the final arbiter. India's system of government does not confer sovereignty to parliament- as the Congress government contends- but divides powers between the President, Parliament, and the Judiciary, with a system of checks and balances as in the U.S. Because the current system has delivered a high rate of growth there may be even a tolerance for corruption as a necessary evil as practiced in China. Conditions are differen

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