Opinion Respectfully Yours

Indian MPs disagree. They react against all remarks which seem insulting,be it Baba Ramdev (who does not deserve to be taken seriously) or Team Anna. But too much respect for your representatives is not healthy. Certainly MPs should be shy of insisting on it. As it is Indian media is far too respectful of the MPs and MLAs and hardly ever pokes fun at them. The British satirical magazine Private Eye has an expression for inebriated MPs,‘tired and emotional’. They regularly call the House of Commons ‘halitosis hall’ implying that all MPs have bad breath due to drinking too much. Nothing like this is written about Indian MPs.

The idea that MPs are above criticism shows the feudal mindset which still prevails after 65 years of democracy. Once elected,the MP or MLA clearly thinks s/he is above the people,a democratic prince or princess whose dignity is unimpeachable. Yet nothing in their daily conduct indicates that they take their own dignity and especially their fellow legislators’ dignity seriously enough. MPs in India misbehave spectacularly compared to British MPs who never ‘rush to the well’ or walk out or stand in the foreground and shout. Yet newspapers report these matters as if this is normal behaviour. One is rarely punished for interrupting another speaker,or disobeying the Speaker who is seen shouting ‘baith jaiye’ time and again.

If a survey was taken where people could be anonymous,I wonder what level of respect would the legislators find people have for them. I doubt if more than 10 per cent of voters have any respect for politicians. They may supplicate them for favours but that is because the nature of politics in India is not truly democratic. The citizens cannot claim services and resources as of their right. The politics is clientelist and they have to bow down to their MPs to get what is their due.

This clientelist politics has a double bad effect. On the one hand,it diminishes the citizen in as much as s/he has to become a beggar if not a bribe giver for favours. It also makes the legislator swollen-headed because s/he thinks it is their right to look down upon their voters. Each constituency is a little fiefdom in which the MP is a raja or a rani and the citizens are subjects.

Yet you can smell the change coming. There are many citizens who do not have a dependency on their MPs. They are often urban,middle class and articulate. RTI has already shown people how they can unmask the authorities and their misdeeds. Every one who has a modern mobile phone can take pictures and upload them to a TV channel. Daily atrocities are exposed more frequently than before. The young will use social media to lampoon their leaders.

Is it any wonder that there is a Bill before the Lok Sabha to censor them?