Jus playing the devil's advocate here... In India now the Jan Lokpal is a favorite solution to fight corruption. I agree, the idea of a corruption free country feels very exciting and no wonder there are so many joining arms in this "war against corruption"... Certainly the uprising of this social movement against corruption is well justified. But my issue is with the proposal of appointing an ombudsman. I see it as an attempt to solve the problem of bureaucracy with yet another bureaucracy. I would need more space to break it down for you. See my following comments :)
Any system that is constructed to attain some sort of teleological efficiency that is expected to be obtained through rational calculations and controls is a bureaucracy. In this very sense the government is a bureaucracy and so too is the Jan Lok Pal. Unfortunately, once established for a certain teleological end, the bureaucracy takes its own life and eventually traps its very creators and the once replicating it and supposed to be benefiting from it. Hence, as Max Webber lamented, Bureaucracy turns into an "Iron Cage". There are umpteen instances where we are victims of such iron cages... We can speak at length about them but that would divert attention.
So, on the one hand bureaucracy appears to facilitate us in attaining some teleological efficiency (e.g., tackling corruption); however, it soon turns into an iron cage from which we have no escape. So how could one use solve the dilemma of bureaucracy? In India, the society has learned to deal with bureaucracy while also benefiting from it by developing a defacto market within the bureaucratic system - if the system is too rigid motivate the gatekeepers to generate some flexibility - Corruption, you might call it. This is the menace we have been trying to fight, right. Then, eventually the Jan Lokpal will become one such iron cage which will be dealt with corruption too :) Now you might speak about accountability and stuff... lets get to that.
Lets take anti-raging laws. It is illegal to rag in college campuses. That doesnt stop raging from occurring year after year. The senior students might develop their own system to monitor who will go and complaint and who wouldn't - a survival of the fittest, so to say. Many a time, out of vested political interest the junior student (lets say an SFI member) could even take vengeance over some senior (lets say a KSU leader) without any basis, by lodging an anti-raging complaint against him/her. Same goes with sexual harassment laws and many such laws. So a law is not a solution to tackle the situation. It either turns into an iron cage that starts controlling our every move or people find their own ways to mend it.
A potential solution will be to legalize many things that are now illegal. For example, I don't see many complaining against Tirupati devotees who get expensive tickets to get into the "quick darshan" ques. Now that would be corruption if that was illegal (as it happens in Guruvayoor). But the devaswom board has legalized it in Tirupati. Same goes with Business class travel, or any such paid service. Even lobbying for that matter should be legalized. At least it allows people to know who is paying for the campaigns of major parties (i.e., is there a hidden agenda). Without making it legal we would not be able to see who is behind the campaign (it happens under the table). Back until the 80s Gold was smuggled into India in large quantities, now we don't have that malice - every person can legally bring in 5kg of Gold to India legally now.
So the solution is not another bureaucratic system with too many iron bars, but a system without too many check posts. I rest my case here :)
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