Mr. Vinod Nair, I understand your concerns regarding common man's plight, and I am as affected by corruption in our system as everyone else is. However, as mentioned earlier, I feel bestowing too much power in the hands of one person / institution is not the solution to this wide-spread and deep-rooted malaise. We already have enough laws and institutions which could tackle the system of bribery and other forms of corruption in the political and administrative systems. What we lack is sufficient autonomy for these institutions to function impartially and devoid of government (read political) interference.
I sometimes feel the Presidential system of democracy was better suited to India than the present Parliamentary system. I feel that the founding fathers of our Constitution reposed too much faith among their brothren in the Constituent Assembly (later Parliament) and hence the political class enjoys too much power to impact the entire country in every aspect of public life. The "compulsions of coalition politics" cited by our learned PM time and again (right from the time the 2G scam came to light) would not be a contraint in a Presidential system, as a learned person like him can still elected on his merit and enjoy public faith. I am sure had Dr. Singh been a President like Mr. Obama in the US, he would have been more decisive and may have taken more bold steps against graft within his govt, than the coalition politics allows him to now. As in the US, we should have a political leadership separate from the Administration and Executive. Though the President of the USA is believed to be the most powerful person, he has to take the Congress's (US parliament, if you will) approval for financial and other major policy changes. Unlike in India, in the US any Congressman can initiate the process to frame a law he/she strongly feels about and has enough political backing for. Here in India, we depend on the ruling party / coalition to initiate and deliver the laws enacted in Parliament by majority vote (a simple majority in most cases suffices).
Unless we have an Administration delinked from the political system, and it is empowered by Constitution to act impartially even against the govt of the day, we will never have radical changes in our governance system. To start with, the Constitutional Authorities such as the CEC, CVC, CAG should be made autonomous and answerable only to the Parliament, not the Central Govt. The Heads of the key institutions (including that of CBI) should be appointed by Parliament, not the govt, to ensure an impartial functioning of these institutions. Hence, what we need is to strengthen and finetune our existing setup rather than add one more layer of bureaucracy, which has no guarantee of success, as ultimately it will also succumb to the same pressures as other Institutions over time.
Hence, I believe that Lokpal is not the answer to the systemic flaws we have.