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Lokpal Bill: Lessons from Tion Agencies View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by ePrints@APU COMMENTARY legislated on, and constituted anti-corrup- Lokpal Bill: Lessons from tion agencies. Orissa was the first state to legislate on this matter (1970),1 while the Karnataka Lokayukta’s Maharashtra was the first to constitute an anti-corruption agency (1972).2 These pre- Performance ceding policy debates and existing models in the states have framed our policy choices. But the debate so far has focused exten- Narayana A, Sudhir Krishnaswamy, Vikas Kumar sively on the constitutional status of the Lokpal (L M Singhvi coined the word Lok- The debate on the design of the 1 Introduction pal, which means “Protector of the People”, Lokpal has been premised on the he debate on policy choices and the to indigenise the word Ombudsman (Stand- questionable assumption that institutional design for a new anti- ing Committee 2011, para 3.3) and the ad- Tcorruption agency at the union and ministrative and legal mechanisms nec- what is needed to combat state levels has pervaded every public fora. essary for a strong and effective agency corruption is a powerful national The ubiquitous debate is characterised by without any attempt to learn from an institution to prosecute and passionate disagreement between familiar empirical analysis of the performance of convict the corrupt, but the opponents who never tire of restating and existing institutional models. rehashing their adop ted positions which The best case for a national Lokpal is debate has not drawn on the have been informed by their moral or to show that the existing Lokayukta in experience with the existing political commitments. Even by the stand- the states works. For instance, it is often institutional models, namely the ards of India’s loud and noisy democracy argued that the Karnataka Lokayukta, Lokayuktas in the states. An the anti-corruption debate has been char- constituted under the Karnataka Lokayukta acterised by a rancour and extra ordinary Act, 1984, provides an argument for an empirical analysis of the brinkmanship that threatens to derail anti-corruption agency at the national performance of the Lokayukta in India’s everyday practice of politics. level. So, it is puzzling that the debate has Karnataka between 1995 and 2011 Despite the polarised debate there is referenced prior bureaucratic discourse suggests that any anti-corruption agreement on the core moral imperative and the National Crime Record Bureau to tackle corruption seriously. However, (ncrb) statistics, but there has been no agency, no matter how powerful, the debate has quickly moved from this syste matic effort to evaluate or assess the that is oriented towards criminal agreed premise to the questionable conclu- experience of existing anti-corruption conviction is bound to fail in the sion that we need a powerful national insti- agencies in the states. The latest Parlia- absence of judicial reforms. tution to prosecute and convict the corrupt mentary Standing Committee Report’s use under the criminal law. To our knowledge of anecdotes as empirical evidence exem- the choice of appropriate legal instruments plifies this approach.3 to deal with corrup- Figure 1: Ratio of Raid to Trap Cases (1995-2011) tion has not been 7 We are grateful to Manavi Belgaumkar, debated. But the idea 6.00 6 Dharmendra Chatur, Tasneem Deo, of an anti-corruption Rajeev Kadambi, Vandana Kamat, and agency is not a new 5 Sumandro C for research assistance, to one. It has survived the P G Babu, Poonam Mehra, V Santhakumar, 4 and Alok Tiwari for helpful discussions, and to scrutiny of the National Azim Premji University for institutional Com mission to Review 3.00 3 support. The data used in this study was the Working of the Con- 2.50 obtained in June 2011 from the public 2.00 stitution (2000), two 2 information officer, the Karnataka Lokayukta Administrative Reforms under the Right to Information Act, 2005. 1 The usual disclaimer applies. Commissions (1966 0.73 0.27 and 2005), four parlia- 0.07 0.06 0.03 0.00 0.12 0.10 0.08 0.14 0.09 0.04 Narayana A (narayana.gatty@ 0 mentary standing com- 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 June azimpremjifoundation.org), 2011 Sudhir Krishnaswamy (krishnaswamysudhir@ mittees (1996, 1998, gmail.com) and Vikas Kumar (vikas.kumar@ 2001 and 2011), and review of eight anti- In this article we hope to bring new azimpremjifoundation.org) are at the Law, corruption bills (1968, 1971, 1977, 1985, insights to this debate by engaging with Governance and Development Initiative, 1989, 1996, 1998 and 2001). Half of the law in action. Over the last six months, Azim Premji University, Bangalore. states and union territories have already researchers at the Azim Premji University’s 12 January 7, 2012 vol xlvii no 1 EPW Economic & Political Weekly COMMENTARY Figure 2: Yearly Distribution of Cases Initiated under Karnataka Lokayukta Act, 1984 2 Agency Prosecutions 450 Justice Justice N Santosh Hegde 428 vs Citizen Complaints Rabindranath Justice S A Hakim Justice M N Venkatachala 399 400 Pyne The need to establish a strong Lokpal that 362 350 initiates criminal investigation against 308 corrupt officials has been a key demand 300 269 in the current debate. The Karnataka 250 Lokayukta had the power, under the cases of 200 194 194 Preven tion of Corruption Act 1988, to in- Raid vestigate cases of corruption and recently Number 150 Trap 142 139 was endowed with suo motu powers 103 100 97 99 even under the Karnataka Lokayukta Act 55 4 50 37 39 to initiate criminal investigation. How- 27 24 27 26 13 2 6 1 6 0 3 2 4 4 10 9 3 0 6 ever, between 1995 and 2011, Karnataka’s 0 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 June Lokayukta carried out only 357 suo motu 2011 raids against individual officials but Figure 3: Departmental Distribution of Cases (1995-2011) Number received and tried to trap 2,681 officials 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000 (and 59 private persons) in response to Taluk/district office, 992 2,159 citizen complaints.5 In other words, police, court, tax, land 115 Trap for every six cases investigated in response Raid 634 to citizen complaints only one is initiated Local government 63 by the department suo motu. Also, the 464 share of raid cases has been decreasing Welfare cluster 28 over the years (Figure 1, p 12). 336 So, a comparison between raid and trap Economic activities 60 Department cases suggests one of the most active 99 Lokayuktas is primarily private com plaint Agriculture and irrigation 28 driven. This in turn suggests that the legal 67 power to initiate action does not determine Regulation 40 whether we have a proactive anti-corrup- 43 tion agency. The incentives for administra- Forest 12 tive action seem to lie elsewhere. Interest- Figure 4: Distribution of Cases across Designations (1995-2011) ingly, institutional leadership is seen to Number of cases have a significant impact on the agency’s 1,229 12501,250 performance. For instance, in Karnataka more than 66% of the raid cases by the 10001,000 848 Lokayukta were initiated between 2006 and 2011, when justice Santosh Hegde was 750750 Trap the Lokayukta (Figure 2). Our finding 500500 agrees with reports in the media suggesting 338 steep changes in Lokayukta’s case load with 201 leadership changes (Aiyappa 2011). But 250250 Raid 133 112 75 note that during the period covered in our 37 0 0 data, raids were conducted under the Pre- Petty officials officials MidMid-ranking-ranking officials officials ProfessionalsProfessionals HigherHigher officials officials Designation Clusters vention of Corruption Act, 1988. The new Law and Governance Initiative have exam- and largely resolved by existing legislation powers conferred by the recent amend- ined a comprehensive data set of all raid and institutional design of the Lokayukta ments to the Karnataka Lokayukta Act, and trap cases handled by Karnataka’s in, say, Karnataka. It has ignored critical 1984 that granted the Lokayukta suo motu Lokayukta between 1995 and 2011. This issues that may have little or nothing to do powers to investigate cases are yet to have data was obtained under the Right to with the design of the Lokpal itself but a signi ficant impact on the institutional ca- Information Act 2005. While our final affect its performance. We conclude that a pacity for proactive intervention. analysis and conclusions will follow shortly, bill that does not assimilate the experience we hope to contribute to the present of existing anti-corruption agencies in 3 Departmental Distribution debates with our preliminary findings states like Karnataka is doomed to fail. The There have been several estimates of the through this article. Our analysis suggests rest of the discussion is organised around departmental distribution of corruption in that the policy debate on the Lokpal has discrete themes that have been highlighted India. These studies often rely on survey data 6 focused on issues that have been anticipated in the current Lokpal debate. of impressions of the public or from self Economic & Political Weekly EPW January 7, 2012 vol xlvii no 1 13 COMMENTARY Figure 5: Processing Rate of Cases (as Percentage of Total Cases) (1995-2011) includes officers of all categories will be 90 80.5 overwhelmed by cases against the lower 80.080 bureaucracy. While the current debate Trap 65.9 63.9 seeks to emphasise the blameworthiness 60.060 54.4 Raid and legal culpability of petty and grand 43.3 41.4 corruption equally, the institutional impact 40.040 on the allocation of scarce prosecutorial resources will be a serious one.8 Further, 20.02 it may be more useful to analyse the 2.8 percentage of prosecuted officers from a 1.4 0.6 0.003 0.00 particular category from among their to- Investigated Sanctioned Chargesheeted Trial completed Convicted Investigated Sanctioned ChargesheetedStage Trial completed Convicted tal cadre strength but unfortunately this disclosure.7 We carried out a department- 4 Petty vs Grand Corruption data is unavailable to us at this point.
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