No offence

An epidemic of outrage appears to have convulsed Parliament,with chunks of the closing days of the Budget Session lost to adjournments. Just when closure was won on the deadlock over Mani Shankar Aiyars comment on Arun Jaitley and Sudip Bandopadhyays words to Basudeb Acharia Aiyar expressed regrets and Acharia was pacified by the Lok Sabha speakers reprimand to Bandopadhyay,on Wednesday the BJPs Ananth Kumar invited the indignation of the RJDs Lalu Prasad. Their disagreement came in the course of a discussion in Lok Sabha on the Census questionnaire.

The surprise is not that affront is so often caused,and offence so easily taken our legislatures rightly remain alert to unparliamentary comments,and the chair is habitually prompt in expunging them. What remains startling,however,about these three incidents is how slow MPs and their party leaderships have been in moving on. Passage of time tends to give figures of the past greater stature,and the danger is that lazy comparisons can be made between todays parliamentarians and their predecessors. But it is certainly the case that Parliament is today less invested in protecting its debates and discussions from disruptiveness. Pressure groups simply do not exist to get offender and offended to participate in the motions of civility that are needed for the smooth functioning of the House.

Numerous tools have been used to get around this. As Lok Sabha speaker,Somnath Chatterjee went to considerable trouble to make a success of the Lok Sabha TV channel,in the hope that not only would proceedings in the House be accessed by the public,but that live telecast would give MPs an incentive to be more and engagingly articulate. Vice President Hamid Ansari,as chairperson of the Rajya Sabha,has weighed in with suggestions for Question Hour and for moderating the anti-defection law. But rules and transparency can only achieve so much. Like democracy itself,parliamentary debate and discussion depend so critically on the imagination of those who participate.