Bangalore, Aug.13 (ANI): To create mass awareness on the need for enactment of Jan Lokpal (ombudsman) Bill, social activists launched a cleanliness drive in Bangalore.
Under the banner of India Against Corruption, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) that has been crusading for the cause mooted by Anna Hazare and his associates for Jan Lokpal, the social activists chose the vegetable market at Yeshwantpur in north Bangalore for the cleanliness drive on Saturday.
Apart from activists of this NGO, scores of locals volunteered to sweep the market yard and the approach roads and by-lanes, clearing the garbage and vegetable waste left behind by the vendors and not cleared by the conservancy wing of Bangalore City Corporation.
Indeed, it was an exercise of two birds with one stone as the activists conveyed the message that similar to clearance of filth making one's surroundings clean, the system of governance can be unsoiled if corruption and nepotism are swept away.
The activists sported T-shirts with the message Corruption Saaku, Jan Lokpal Beku to imply in the local Kannada language - Enough is enough as for corruption and the need of the hour is Jan Lokpal.
"Two things, one is waste has to be segregated and only then the city will become clean and also a bigger message that by doing this we are showing corruption (in society and governance) can be cleaned," said Sharma, a young activist of India Against Corruption.
As activists went around spreading awareness about the Jan Lokpal Bill, several local residents and onlookers joined them in sweeping the streets of Yeshwantpur.
One of the local residents observed that by and large, people had tolerated corruption and dereliction of duty for over two decades and it was the saturation point for the society to bear any more of such practices.
"We have got used to living in miserable conditions, it is adjust 'maadi', rehne do (let it be), is something that we all in the last twenty years learned to tolerate. So I think we have reached the end of our toleration in form of corruption or in form of filth," said local G Asha.
The much-debated Lokpal Bill, which aims to set up an anti-corruption watchdog in the country, was tabled in the Lok Sabha (lower house of the Indian parliament) on August 4.
However, Hazare and his supporters across the country burnt copies of this Bill.
They claimed that the Bill tabled in its present form in the parliament lacked teeth to counter corruption and it had ignored inclusion of several suggestions proposed by the members of the civil society in the review panel.
The opposition parties too termed the government's draft Bill introduced in the Lok Sabha as toothless.
While the civil society activists including Anna Hazare and his team are garnering public support against the government's draft Bill, the government wants to hasten the passage of this Bill in the parliament.
Corruption and a series of graft cases have proven to be the key issue plaguing the ruling government.
The final meeting between the government and the civil society representatives on the drafting of the bill had ended on June 22, with differences on six key issues which included the Prime Minister, the higher judiciary, and lawmakers, being brought under the purview of the Lokpal.
The civil society members also differed with the government over the mode of selection of the Lokpal panel and removal of its members.
Graft has long been a part of daily life in India, but a series of recent scandals - which include violations in granting telecom licences that cost the country $39 billion in lost revenue - are unprecedented.(ANI)
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