“The Joke of Lokpal”, a Facebook campaign, started by five students believes that there is no need for a Lokpal bill and is much against the method used by the Anna Hazare committe for getting a bill passed. Raj Francis, the man behind this movement says, “How can five faces represent what 1.2 billion people in this country want? The so called “civil society” which says, it will not stand for elections, it will protest for the Lokpal, it also wants all citizens to protest for the same and go against the government,” adding, “They are not giving a political alternative to the people. How is it in anyway different, as people still don’t get to chose the representatives in the Lokpal?”“We want to make it clear that we are not against the Anna Hazare movement. But we are very much against the method used by his team to get a bill passed,” he adds. The five member group includes, Raj Francis, Arun Kumar, Aniketh Yadav, Vamshidhar Reddy and Satyavrath, all five engineering students from different colleges in the city.According to Francis, a fast is not a method to get a bill passed. “There is a proper procedure to get a bill passed, and for that one needs to be a public representative. Just because Anna Hazare and a group of people will sit and fast, doesn’t mean they have the authority to ask for a bill to be passed. If that’s the case, then tomorrow, people will start using it for many other causes. This sort of dilutes the whole aim and motive and does not set a right example.” He also adds that, this has created a much larger rift, between the government and the people, along with wastage of time and resources. Another member Aniketh Yadav says, “The people in the committee are not being elected by the people. How can one be assured that, all the members are non-corrupt? A body of representatives from the Opposition, and from civil society may not necessarily be all transparent. Some members might not even be a part of the government. Will a corrupt body draft an anti-corruption bill?” The Facebook page has about 645 supporters, and all of these people were added by the creators only if they knew what they were protesting for. Yadav explains, “The page is moderated. All the people on the page are either friends or acquaintances. We went to a lot of them personally and explained the idea behind starting such a protest, and only then member were added. We wanted to make sure that people on the community knew what they were protesting for.”Explaining the reason behind this, Francis says, “During the Tank Bund march we asked people, what the Lokpal bill was and how effective is it. And just 3 per cent of the people knew about it, and the rest has had no clue about the protest and had just come there for fun.” Francis feels, one of the many reasons for this bridge between the masses and the Anna Hazare committee is that there is no window for suggestions. “I have also written the suggestions to the Indian National Congress, and also tried to get in touch with Anna Hazare, but nothing worked out. All this will be possible only when we get a bigger platform to speak up.” Mentioning about an alternative, The Joke of Lokpal group feels that judiciary must be given a chance, Yadav says, “Lately, we have seen Supreme Court standing up against a lot of issues like the 2G and CWG. Why not place vigilant bodies under the judiciary? Lokpal being declared as an independent body would mean it is not answerable to anyone and will lead to the misuse of the Lokpal bill.”
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