The Congress is doing everything in its power to prevent the passage of a strong Lok Pal bill. Having accepted that lower level civil servants or Group C, as they are officially known, should be included within the ambit of the Lok Pal on Wednesday evening the Congress suddenly summoned a meeting of the parliamentary committee on Thursday and reversed the earlier decision. The excuse is that the Lok Pal will be inundated if it has to police 5.7 million Group C employees as well, so only top level civil servants will be answerable to the Lok Pal while the Central Vigilance Commission, which is controlled by the government, will be in charge of the Group C. The civil service in India considers itself above the people and operates on the principle of " through proper channel " which means that an ordinary taxpayer has to approach the lowest level clerk first if he has to get any work done. The clerk will open a file and present it to the fellow above him and so on up the ladder to the decision maker. The diligence of the clerk most often depends on the amount of bribe a person can afford and the money is distributed up the chain. Naturally politicians and civil servants will do anything to see that the spigot is not turned off. A couple of days ago a snake charmer released dozens of poisonous snakes in the tehsil office of Haraya Tehsil in the Basti district of UP is protest against the demand for bribes. He wanted a safe area where to release this snakes and had even written to President Patil, who had instructed tehsil officers to help the snake charmer. They, naturally, demanded bribes and the man retaliated. The scum should beware. Tomorrow it could be bullets.