After FDI, it's Lokpal Bill

Harish Gupta

With the Lokpal Bill set to be the centerpiece of public discourse, I think it is time to wonder why this creature keeps popping back like a squash ball. It is some half a century ago that the venerable Ashoke Kumar Sen, the then Congress law minister, moved the first Lokpal Bill. It failed to go through Parliament. In 1968, it was Shanti Bhushan who took his turn, but it got nixed in the Rajya Sabha. It was followed by a procession of similar last-stage abortions in 1971, 1977, 1985 (it was Ashoke Sen again, as law minister in the Rajiv Gandhi cabinet), 1989, 1996, 1998, 2001, 2005 and 2008. Its transformation into a Civil Society movement since then, under the (contested) leadership of Anna Hazare, Arvind Kejriwal or Baba Ramdev, the yoga instructor, does not dilute the doubts raised by its serial rejection by the legislators. And if lawmakers have considered it to be a bothersome intrusion, is the Civil Society justified in still demanding it with so much earnestness?