 | | Game in Washington | | DESPITE all the bluster about an impending default on the government's debt, most observers in Washington and on Wall Street still believe the two parties will reach a crisis-averting agreement.
That's because the practice of American politics assumes that all players will negotiate according to predictable patterns _ that they will realise they can get more from compromise than by demanding everything and winning nothing.
Under that assumption, President Obama is right to keep pressing for a compromise, because eventually the Republicans will fall in line. But as two wildly different fields _ game theory and the study of elephant mating patterns _ show, there are limits to the usual assumptions: Sometimes players simply refuse to play the game, and when that happens, the best advice for their opponents is to do the same.
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|  |  | | CAN'T THE US DO THIS RIGHT? | | THERE is only one thing worse than Republicans and Democrats failing to agree to lift the debt ceiling, and that is lifting the debt ceiling without a well-thought-out plan and with hasty cuts totalling trillions of dollars over a decade. What business do you know _ that is still in business _ that would operate this way: making massive longterm cuts, negotiated by exhausted executives, without any strategic plan? It certainly wouldn't be a business you'd expect to thrive.
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Cabinet nod to Lokpal bill
AFP
NEW DELHI INDIA’s cabinet approved a new anti-corruption bill on Thursday that aims to create a powerful new ombudsman tasked with investigating endemic graft in the public sector.
Under the proposed law, citizens would be able to approach the ombudsman with complaints about corrupt officials, including federal ministers and senior bureaucrats who are shielded under India’s current laws.
Information Minister Ambika Soni said the ombudsman would be picked from the highest levels of the judiciary and be supported by eight other officials who would be from the judiciary or be people of “impeccable integrity.” The proposed law, called the Lokpal bill from the Hindi word for ombudsman, will now go to parliament where members will vote on it in the next session, which begins on August 1
“The overall thrust of the government has been to ensure greater transparency and accountability in every aspect of public life,” Soni said.
The administration of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is reeling from a series of corruption scandals, including the allegedly fraudulent sale of telecom licences in 2008 estimated to have cost the exchequer up to $40 billion.
On Wednesday, a probe into mining in the opposition- controlled southern state of Karnataka revealed local officials had connived with businesses to export iron ore illegally, causing a loss to the public of $3.6 billion.
The government has struggled to draft the new law amid criticism from the opposition and civil society activists that its version of the bill was too soft on corrupt officials.
Under the bill approved on Thursday, the prime minister will not be subject to investigations by the ombudsman.
The opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) criticised the decision.
“If a prime minister does something corrupt to save his seat and there is no investigation into the corruption, then what does this mean?” BJP spokesman Ravishankar Prasad told reporters.
India has a dismal record of bringing corrupt senior public officials to justice.
In six decades only one senior politician, Rao Shiv Bahadur Singh, has been convicted of graft and served a jail term — for taking a bribe of 25,000 rupees ($557) in 1949.
Current laws require the government’s approval before any sitting bureaucrat or minister can be prosecuted.
The Lokpal bill is expected to remove this requirement.
In addition to the Lokpal bill, the government will also introduce legislation to improve judicial accountability and protect whistleblowers, in a move to fend off allegations that it has been slow to tackle corruption.
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