India Rejuvenation Initiative (IRI) has decided to launch a public movement against corruption and lack of accountability at the top. It believes that corruption is encouraged from top and it spreads towards the bottom. Unless it is stemmed at the top, no significant improvement can occur. It is noted with concern that so far, the systems that were set up to check the malaise have proved to be ineffective because one can see that corruption has increased manifold despite their effort.

The efforts made by the Government to enforce accountability in the system in the past several years did not succeed because these were not enforced, intentionally, at the top levels. Seldom persons occupying the top positions were held accountable for their conduct. IRI is of the firm view that the Nation must examine through a formal and regular process on who earned how much through ‘bribe’ or 'consideration for the services rendered', or 'nazarana' or 'hafta' exploiting their seats of power. IRI strongly believes through experience of its members that the malaise of lack of accountability and corruption can be curbed only if persons at the influential / powerful positions and those who held these in the past are held accountable for the wealth that they possess either in their own name or in the name of their near and dear ones, nami or benami. The fact is that accumulated wealth cannot be hidden. IRI is of the view that assured (not simple!) way to curb corruption and enforce accountability is to place before the public the ill-gotten wealth of all those who served at the top in the country.

With that objective in view, IRI has decided to mobilize public opinion for the purpose of urging and pursuing our Government to set up a mechanism to verify the returns of assets (moveable and immoveable) filed by all the public servants (both political and bureaucratic) who occupied the top and influential positions in the country.

In an effort towards ensuring that probity returns in all walks of public life, Justice Lahoti Former Chief Justice of India wrote to Prime Minister on behalf of IRI to initiate a mechanism to verify the returns filed by all public servants (both politicians and bureaucrats) who are currently holding or had occupied high positions in the government.

In his letter Justice Lahoti mentioned that any law which is not backed with the requisite enforcement mechanism would fail to achieve the objective, the proof being failure of all the laws concerning disclosure of assets and properties by public servants (both political and bureaucratic). Barring few exceptions, filing of false or incomplete returns, or worse, non-filing of returns, have become the norm of the day. Lack of transparency, ineffective mechanism for enforcing accountability and near all-embracing corruption have come to play as characteristics of our system of governance.

Writing on behalf of IRI, Justice Lahoti stated that after detailed analysis and giving considerable thoughts to this issue, IRI has reached the conclusion that only way to check this malady is to bring forth an effective mechanism. The suggestion is as the first step, returns of assets of all those who occupied or are occupying high public offices in government, should be taken up for verification on a “fast track”. For this purpose some thing like an Integrity Commission should be set up at the National level. The Commission can adopt the simple method of verification by first making public the returns filed by the concerned individuals and then inviting the information any one may have regarding the assets possessed by the concerned individuals. The Commission can, thereafter, make appropriate verification / enquiries before making its findings public. Based on the Commission’s findings, necessary actions should be initiated speedily by the Government against those who are found to posses assets disproportionate to the known sources of income.

IRI is certain that aforesaid step will instill the requisite degree of confidence in the public and will be a concrete step in the direction of cleaning the Government apparatus and restoring probity in public life.

IRI has also decided to bring before the people the hard facts on how lack of accountability at higher levels has led to the incessant loot of public money by unscrupulous elements which led to wide spread poverty and backwardness of our country. IRI launched its web site with the address www.iri.org.in for this purpose. IRI expresses the hope that with peoples support the task of cleansing the system can be completed without much difficulty.