THREE AGENTS MEANT TO ENSURE ACCOUNTABILITY BY GOVERNMENT

THREE AGENTS MEANT TO ENSURE ACCOUNTABILITY BY GOVERNMENT

V.S.Gopalakrishnan

A couple of months back I attended a book discussion session in Nehru Centre, Mumbai; and the book that was being discussed was “Accountability – Angst, Awareness and Action” written by Mr.Jay P.Desai (Publisher: Dorling Kindersley (India) and pages: 228). The “Accountability”, it must be clarified, is in regard to governance by the Government.

The author Jay Desai  was the CEO of a Consulting Firm and he was shaken by the 26/11/2008 terrorist attack that happened  in Mumbai  which took both the State Government of Maharashtra and the Central Government by shock and surprise. Nearly 150 persons were killed and 300 persons were injured in the terrorist attack. Desai began to search into the reasons for the failure of the Governments in preventing the Mumbai  massacre. Surely there was a failure in governance and a failure in accountability on the part of the Governments. But as he researched, he expanded the scope of his research going back to ancient times. The book is the outcome of his detailed research.

To us participants in the book-discussion, the author Jay Desai himself made a power-point presentation containing the summary of his findings and the various salient points in his book. One of the important questions he posed was: “Who is to ensure the accountability of the top pillars of the government, namely the legislature, the executive and the judiciary?”  And the answer is that there are three agents in the nation which have to play a supervisory role. They have to be vigilant and should monitor and ensure that the pillars of the Government are functioning properly. And these three agents are (1) citizens (2) civil society and (3) media.

So, remember, that the real watchdogs in a democracy are the three agents, namely, the citizens, the civil society and the media. They informally stand on a higher pedestal than that of the Government machineries and have to play an important role in questioning and exposing acts of mis-governance by them. They have to play an important role in ensuring proper accountability by the Governmental Organizations which can tend to grow authoritarian, erratic, unresponsive, corrupt, evil etc.

It is here that the Congress has totally failed in its perceptions. Congress thinks that the MPs cannot be questioned by the citizens, the civil society or the Media. Maybe this failure of the Congress is deliberate, in order to obfuscate issues and misinform the nation. In every TV discussion you can see Renuka Chaudhary asking others, “Who are you to say it? You fight an election and become MP”! It is as if only the MPs are the final authorities and none can question them!

The various megascams by the Congress led UP would have remained under the carpet, despite the CAG reports, but for vigilant citizens like Dr.Subramanian Swamy, responsible groups of civil society like Team Anna, India Against Corruption, CPIL (Centre for Public Interest Litigation) etc and active Media Channels like Times Now, India TV and some others. The Media in general is scared of exposing the Congress because of its striking and punishing power. And it is generally said that many media houses are trotting out only paid news in favour of the corrupt government.

And today we have seen Headlines Today Channel with its expose called “Project Dhritarashtra” in which it has come out with the results of its detailed investigations into an NGO run by the Law Minister Salman Khurshid. Salman Khurshid and his wife Louise Khurshid have been found by the Channel’s investigations, with supporting evidence made available to the TV viewers, guilty of misappropriation of nearly Rs.71 lakhs of Governmental grants (given by Social Welfare Ministry). There are grants by other Ministries too and if one goes back to say 10 years, Salman Khurshid and Louise Khurshid could be guilty of misappropriation of several hundreds of crores. The grants were shown as used by showing false names and false certificates. They could be charged with cheating, breach of faith etc and may have to go behind bars if justice has a free hand. This same Salman Khurshid was defending Robert Vadra the other day and was heard saying that he would die for his leader Sonia who is perhaps the pinnacle of corruption in India as perceived by the common citizens excluding the Congressmen.

We have now come to a stage where the Central Ministers keep denying all the scams. It is not just sufficient to remove them from power. They should be criminally proceeded against and got suitably punished. As no criminal action will be initiated by the Government itself, it is for the agents like civil society to go to the Courts in the matter. Meanwhile the Media has to project before the people the evil acts of our leaders so that the public is properly informed. And we are happy to witness more and more Media agents losing fear of Sonia and her henchmen and coming out fearlessly with their exposes on the Government.

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