Jan Lokpal:Second fight for Independence

Just third day after today, the largest democracy of world namely India shall celebrate its 65th independence day when prime-minister of India will address the nation. I remember the last year's 16th August editorial of 'The Times of India' written by renowned fiction writer cum columnist Chetan Bhagat where he portrayed the Mr. prime-minister as an innocent person had nothing to talk and just re-iterated parts of older speeches of PMs. Anyway, I wonder what will he speak this year. He could have talked about control on terrorism but that was also taken away from him last month.

My concern is obviously not prime-minister's address, he is a great man and will have a lot to say. There are so many issues of national importance are roaming around us but let me talk about corruption for which a determined Gandhian is starting so called second struggle for independence i.e. a struggle by some of us with our elected government to make an act for our betterment. This is a different issue to think why we have to press the government to realise the need of such law which is the ultimate demand of time, when we have elected the government. I have here something to say about the two proposed drafts of the act against corruption.

I was just reading the two drafts and I can't claim to have understood everything written there but still I dare to write something about them here. 'Lokpal' i.e. the draft prepared by our government addresses around 70% issues raised by civil society but none of them are in the form as suggested by civil society or as mentioned in 'Jan Lokpal' draft prepared by Anna Hazare's team. To give you a quick example, Jan lokpal demands a body under Lokpal who can address public grievances of all the government department or any other institutions partially or completely funded by government. Once a person lodge his/her complaints, lokpal will investigate the matter within stipulated time and direct the complainant and concerned officer who will have to take necessary action again within given time. Now, let's look at the same law formed by the government: Every above mentioned department will appoint a public grievance officer who will entertain such cases and if the department fails to satisfy complainant, the complainant has to again go to lokpal which will further inquire the case and then take the action.

This is just one example, lokpal draft by gov. has many such drawbacks. One may question how the above modification by government is unacceptable or what is/are drawback(s) in that? The major problem that promotes corruption is the lack of patience and unavailability of time for us apart from of course the desire to increase zeros in our bank balance and many other things. The above procedure requires both patience and time apart from the fact that you are complaining a body about his own faults which they don't want to address at least in today's scenario.

The second major drawback of lokpal draft is that the proposed body has to depend on the government for almost every action for example they have to ask for investigating officer if they needed and every process goes through a loop of present government system which is too corrupt to investigate such cases (at least this is current presumption and a flat reality). However the jan lokpal demands a totally independent body from selection of jan lokpal to its execution which directly come under president of India.

Here I am presenting some facts showing difference between these two drafts:
(1.) Both draft gives the same power to chairperson of lokpal that of chief justice of India but selection procedure adopted by jan lokpal are independent from political domain.
(2.) Lokpal, according to government draft can investigate into high level corruption cases only but jan lokpal will cover every government employee including the employee of institution partially or fully funded by government.
(3.) Lokpal doesn't talk about protection of whistle-blower (the person who complains about corruption) but jan lokpal underlines the procedure to protect the whistle-blower from any kind of harm due to his/her involvement in such cases.
(4.) Government draft doesn't allow lokpal to take action on any act of Member of parliament inside the parliament for example it can't investigate cases like cash for vote scam. Similarly it excludes judiciary and PM from the jurisdiction of lokpal.
(5.)Jan lokpal demands claims its share of 10% on the public money that has been saved/undermined due to its action. This money will be used in the development of lokpal which is an attempt to get a bit of freedom from government system. Government draft doesn't talk about this.
(6.) Jan lokpal demands dissolution of CVC (central vigilance commission) and all its officer to be the part of lokpal which give us a single window system to fight against corruption.
(7.) Both draft demands formation of special courts to be formed to execute such cases. Both have filter mechanism to remove baseless complaints by preliminary investigation.

There are many more things that differ between two drafts apart from above-mentioned but what I see is that government constructed his draft using the jan lokpal as base but had not shown any gut to fight against this giant. No doubt the jan lokpal is our dream and if we want to see a future where a child doesn't blame his/her parents for making him a bribe-payer hence corrupt (it never flows one-way), we must support the jan lokpal. Even if we think that perfection is not the job of Indian, we must fight for a better lokpal than one proposed by government. The time has come to fight for our freedom otherwise they will keep making such symbolic and some non-sense laws to control rather use us for their business!

"I have just dared to write on a national issues for which I don't find myself qualified but this is an innocent attempt to share what I got from those drafts. Now, if you have got some interests you can find these drafts in the link below:
http://www.annahazare.org/pdf/Jan%20lokpal%20bill%20by%20Expert%20(Eng).pdf
http://www.annahazare.org/pdf/Lokpal%20Bill%20by%20Government%20of%20India.pdf"

Thanks for visiting me
Signing off
Deepoo

My summer intern

At the very moment someone asks me about my summer intern at applied materials, I laugh and say my project wasn't that great as I expected as I expected some research work with industrial flavor. Actually, when I look back thing looks different than while I was doing all those things. It is a different thing that the work given to me was not as I was expecting from the company but given the constraints at the IIT-center that was the choice. Things went bad actually when our lab couldn't get safety clearance. Anyway those are the only things to regret and better to remember the intern for something better that I have knowingly/unknowingly learnt.

I was given a project that involved (rather later involved) some plant-visits, calling to some companies engineers but mostly digging information on internet. The tricky part of all the efforts put there was to document properly whatever the work you have done so that it could last long. Going through 100s of MBs of pdfs apart from web-reading was really a tough job in terms of sustaining the same routine lon-long times. The project took many turns as it progressed depending on not only the instruction and feedback of guide but also on my efforts.

Presenting those data in Mbs in few slides was really the challenging part especially when I had to present it to the guy sitting in US and make them understand, some of them could ask you as many doubts as they can :) In those two months I came across through many companies in India which started from a lab and many more lab-scale process/products waiting for entrepreneur. The interest was grown so much that I started thinking for startups :) As if Indian labs and companies were not enough, I was given a new project of same kind which demanded scanning of world map where the work on a particular kind of refrigeration process is going on.

I was really frustrated with these on net service but the last week of intern was a bit interesting relatively as I had visited the some of wastewater treatment plants in Mumbai based on different technologies including one at IIT Bombay about which I shall write later. I feel it worth to mention that I could visit these plants only after spending hours on phone calling companies and requesting for visits. Mind you! if you want to do any such industrial visits especially when you from an industry you might need to do mockery... ::P

Now, when I see the last three months at institute, I have a different view about my internship. No doubt I learnt a lot during that period but still I would say don't select an intern without knowing anything about its profile no matter how big a company is. Hope, I remember my words next to next year :P

Disclaimer: This is my first blog post which anyway has gone too long to read, so it doesn't matter whether you reached here by reading all those things above or not , I must say you thanks for paying a visit :)
see you later
Signing off
Deepoo Kumar