Mobilize Against CorruptionArvind Kejriwal -15 December 2010,

Mobilize Against CorruptionArvind Kejriwal

15 December 2010, 06:27 PM IST


The country is passing through very trying times. The credibility of almost every single institution is under attack – judiciary, media, corporate sector, executive, politicians – the people have lost faith in almost every institution. I get phone calls from so many people every day asking what will happen to the country, where will it go?

A huge churning, samudra manthan, is going on in this country. Only time will tell what will come out of this churning. This is the time to seek an overhaul of our systems. Media played an excellent role in exposing corruption in CWG, 2G, land scams, Adarsh etc in the last few months. However, now is the time to seek systemic changes. Unfortunately, the media is not talking about these changes.

Some friends in the media tell me that there is a corruption- fatigue in the media. People might be tired of reading muck being exposed every day. However, they are looking for solutions. It is time that the media started talking about these changes.

Justice Santosh Hegde, Prashant Bhushan, Kiran Bedi, myself and others have drafted such a Bill. Rajesh Kalra and myself had written about the salient features of this Bill in our earlier blogs. You must have recently have read in the newspapers that Neera Yadav, former Chief Secretary of Uttar Pradesh has been sentenced to four years of imprisonment for giving away government land to some private people at throwaway prices. Under the law, she can be in jail for four years and enjoy her ill-gotten wealth. There is no provision to recover the losses to the government due to her corruption. Likewise, even if Raja were convicted, he would spend a maximum of five years in jail, come out and be free subsequently to enjoy thousands of crores that he made.

In the draft Bill prepared by us, we have provided that not only should maximum punishment for corruption be increased from five years, but at the time of conviction, the judge should make an estimate of loss caused due to corruption and that money should be recovered from the culprits.

In response to my last blog post, many people had written that we should come on the streets. We are doing a march from Rajghat to Jantar Mantar on 30thJanuary, the day Mahatma was assassinated, to demand an effective Lokpal Bill. Please join this march in large numbers. You still have more than a month to mobilize people. Let me know how many people will you mobilize?
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