Does corruption have a caste? Lokpal quotas are a lunacy

The rush to find an all-party consensus on setting up an anti-corruption agency has found expression in the predictable lunacy of caste- and community-based reservations for the proposed Lokpal.

According to The Asian Age , the draft Cabinet note prepared by the Cabinet Secretary envisages the Lokpal panel as a nine-member constitutional body (headed by a chairman) with 50 percent reservation for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes.

The Hindustan Times adds that the draft bill also has provision for “adequate representation” for women and minorities on the Lokpal panel.

Evidently, this lunacy is a response to the demands articulated by the leaders of a few parties at the all-party meeting convened on Wednesday to evolve a consensus on the issue. These are the same parties that have sliced and diced society into caste- and community-based vote banks and advanced their own fortunes by playing ‘identity politics’ to perfection.

At that all-party meeting, Ram Vilas Paswan was among those who demanded quotas for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Other Backward Classes, minorities and women on the Lokpal panel.

His views were echoed by Samajwadi Party leaders Mohan Singh and Ram Gopal Yadav, who pitched for reservation for all these constituencies not only on the Lokpal panel but even on the search committee that would choose the Lokpal.

And Laloo Prasad Yadav, who has milked the politics of caste for all its worth in Bihar but still finds himself politically groundless, too chimed in on this score.

The leader of the Majlis Ittehadul Muslimeen questioned the very need for a Lokpal, but with admirable dexterity of approach, argued equally forcefully for representation for minorities on the panel.

Strikingly, according to media reports, Team Anna, which initially had inhibitions about introducing quotas on the Lokpal panel, appears now to have reconciled itself to such a provision. Evidently, it felt that continued opposition to this provision would only help the Congress delay the introduction of the bill even further, and give it a halfways legitimate excuse to do so.

Prashant Bhushan, one of the core members of Team Anna, appears to have lingering inhibitions about the proposal to have quotas on the Lokpal panel. But even he conceded that having such quotas for the selection committee and Lokpal employees would ensure that they were more representative of the social diversity of the country.

No other constitutional body - not the Election Commission, not the Central Vigilance Commission, not the Comptroller and Auditor-General – has a provision for such caste- and community-based quotas. Corruption is, ironically, the one realm where India’s caste identities, which otherwise assert themselves forcefully, vanish miraculously. The pantheon of our leaders who face grave corruption charges shows that corruption is the one area where caste and communal divisions don’t count: it is the ultimate equal-opportunity enterprise.

Indicatively, although M Karunanidhi and Jayalalithaa come from opposite ends of the caste spectrum, there is nothing to choose between them in terms of the corruption allegations they face. And Mayawati, that Dalit goddess, has valiantly raised the bar in respect of monumental corruption in her benighted state.

So, if corruption can be caste-blind, and if corruption can be truly secular, why can’t the Lokpal too be?