Daijiworld Media Network

Mangaluru, Mar 21: According to official announcement on March 20, retired Supreme Court judge, Justice Pinaki Chanda Bose is India’s first Lokpal. This is a long time since John B. Monteiro advocated the Scandinavian-origin Ombudsman to tackle corruption in India in mid-1960s. His first book, titled Corruption – Control of Maladministration, was the first book to comprehensively argue for adopting Ombudsman in India. It was published in 1966 with a foreword by Motilal Setalvad, India’s first Attorney General, who welcomed “the publication of this study on corruption and the remedial measures which can be adopted to control or correct it” and concluded: “ I trust that this new publication will stimulate further interest on the very important topic with which it deals”.

It did provoke “further interest”, including commissions and committees which came up with the Indian designation of “Lokpal” and “Lokayuka” – the latter being adopted in many States of India over many years. But the Central Lokpal (Ombudsman) proved to be elusive as reflected in the title of John Monteiro’s second book on the subject: Corruption - India’s Painful Crawl to Lokpal, published in USA in 2013 with a foreword by M. Veerappa Moily who had chaired the Second Administrative Reforms Commission and the concerned Bill was passed in both the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha in 2011. Concluding his Foreword, Moily wrote: “Mr. John B. Monteiro , I would stress, is a pioneering soul who spearheaded the thought process on corruption through his book in 1966. This revised updated book deserves to be read to salute his great contribution on the subject.”

It is in this context that one has to consider the prescience of John Monteiro in including in the title “India’s Painful Crawl to Lokpal”. Even the end of this “crawl” cannot be credited to Parliament or the government but was prodded by the Supreme Court (SC). The appointment of the first Lokpal comes after the Lokpal Act was notified on January 16, 2014. SC, hearing a PIL by NGO Common Cause, on January 4, 2019 asked the government to appoint Lokpal at the earliest saying “much time has elapsed, something needs to be done”. Again, on January 17, SC had pulled up the Centre for repeatedly delaying the appointment. Once again, on March 7, SC had asked the Mody government to inform it within a fortnight by when it would finalise the names of Lokpal.

All these repeated proddings by SC resulted in “running” instead of “crawling” – as prophesied In John Monteiro’s book title. To go by Shakespeare’s book title ‘All is well that ends well”.