By TCN News,
New Delhi: All India Students Federation has expressed anguish over the fact that while the Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption campaign was given extensive coverage by electronic media but this media did not give space to subjective discussions on the implications of the Jan Lokpal Bill which is going to give state more power and unchecked authority.
We respect the sentiment that brings a large number of people out in support of the Jan Lokpal Bill movement. But we do not think there has been enough thought given to the implications of the provisions that it seeks to make into law. In these circumstances, one would have ordinarily expected the media to have played a responsible role by acting as a platform for debate and discussion about the issues, so that we can move, as a society, towards a better and more nuanced law. Instead, the electronic media have killed the possibility of any substantive discussion,” said Sudhanshu Lal, President, AISF, JNU.
The JNU unit of the students group had on 23rd April organized a program on “Structural Corruption and Jan Lokpal Bill: The Role of Media” at the university campus.
“AISF believes, India is a country where honesty and integrity in public and private life have been glorified and upheld in history. Yet, India today is one of the most corrupt countries in the world. The world’s most corrupt people and the bourgeois media have suddenly started talking, writing and reading about corruption,” he said.
At the demand of CPI for Lokpal Bill, Administrative Reforms Commission (ARC) was set up in 1966 which recommended the constitution of two-tier machinery – of a Lokpal at the Centre, and Lokayukta(s) in the states. This was the start of Lokpal Bill. The bill was for the first time presented during the fourth Lok Sabha in 1968, and was passed there in 1969. However, the Lok Sabha was dissolved, resulting in the first death of the bill. It was revived in 1971, 1977, 1985, 1989, 1996, 1998, 2001, 2005 and 2008. Each time, after the bill was introduced to the house, it was referred to some committee for improvements – a joint committee of parliament, or a departmental standing committee of the Home Ministry – and before the government could take a final stand on the issue the house was dissolved. In September 2004, under the pressure of CPI and other left parties, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government would lose no time in enacting the bill. But strong lobbies blocked it.
Lal criticized the present form of the Lokpal Bill. “We have to ask very carefully whether this bill actually addresses the structural issues that cause corruption. In setting up a super-state body, that is almost self selecting and virtually unaccountable, it may in fact laying the foundations of an even more intense concentration of power. Finally, if, as a society, we were serious about combating the political nexus that sustains corruption – we would be thinking seriously about hunger, poverty, farmers suicide, malnutrition, education, health, communalism, casteism and gender issues.
The meeting was chaired by AISF President Com. Sudhanshu and the speakers were Ameeque Jamei (Independent Filmmaker), Hidesh Joshi from NDTV and Prof Vivek Kumar from JNU.