Anti-corruption

The debate, originally scheduled for eight hours, ultimately took 11 hours, interrupted by several parties storming out of the chamber and the speaker calling the lawmakers to order from time to time. Though the bill had first been proposed more than 40 years ago, it became a hot topic this past year with a surge of middle-class anger at everyday graft and ever-billowing multi-billion dollar scams in Asia's third largest economy.

India is also the country which reveres Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi as the Father of the Nation, generally referred to as the Mahatma or Great Soul. The movement for the Lokpal bill - Lokpal being the Sanskrit word for "protector of the people" - was spearheaded by Anna Hazare, a 74-year-old Gandhian who has imitated Gandhi's appearance as well as his methods of peaceful protest in championing the cause.

A Gandhian protest

Hazare not only demanded various amendments to the bill, but also succeeded in forcing the government to incorporate some of them in the final version. He has gone on hunger strike three times since the beginning of the campaign. His two-week hunger strike last summer brought out tens of thousands of people all over India - mostly in the metropolitan cities - on to the streets to demonstrate their support for his demands.

Even as the Lokpal bill was passing through the lower house of parliament, Hazare had begun a three-day hunger strike on Tuesday, December 27, in the western metropolis of Mumbai to express his dissatisfaction with the bill in its present and final form. But turnout was small for his most recent protest compared to the crowds he had been able to mobilize earlier. One possible reason for that is that the government had already met most of his demands. And now he has broken off his fast early.

Until now, the government has met most of his demands. The proposed corruption ombudsman will have authority over senior politicians and officials. The prime minister has even allowed his office to be under its purview. But one of his further demands, namely, that the ombudsman also have authority over the country's top investigative agency, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), has not been met, which will considerably weaken the watchdog’s authority, in Hazare's view, as it will have no power to conduct independent investigations.

Battle far from over

Prominent colleagues of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in the ruling Congress Party have been blaming the opposition - mainly the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) - for the failure of the bill to reach the two-thirds majority necessary for a constitutional amendment - which would have made the ombudsman a constitutional body.

The BJP had thrown its weight behind Hazare's campaign. The BJP had also demanded that the provisions of the Lokpal bill should not be binding on state governments, leaving them free to enact their own anti-corruption legislation. Despite this demand having been met, BJP-leader Sushma Swaraj still described the bill as being "full of holes and flaws" while rejecting it in parliament.

However much the government might have hoped to defuse Hazare's crusade by bringing the bill before the year's end, the ombudsman battle is likely to carry over into 2012, with elections coming up soon in no fewer than five states, including the most populous, Uttar Pradesh.

Author: Arun Chowdhury (Reuters, AP, PTI)
Editor: Sarah Berning