Opinion Tavleen Singh writes: Debate AQI, not Vande Mataram
It is my fervent hope that Rahul Gandhi now raises many more real issues. It is not just the air of our cities that is polluted, almost everything else as well.
Lok Sabha LoP Rahul Gandhi speaks in Lok Sabha during the winter session of the Parliament, in New Delhi on Friday. (Source: Sansad TV) This was going to be a critique of the dismal performance of the Leader of the Opposition in Parliament last week. His intervention in the election reforms debate left me baffled. He meandered from khadi and kanjeevaram sarees to university vice-chancellors and the evils of the RSS to threatening the Election Commissioner. It was a depressing performance. But as I settled down to write this column, Rahul Gandhi popped up on a news channel, speaking in the Lok Sabha. This time, he raised the issue of air pollution in our cities.
He said that this was a subject on which there could be no disagreement between the government and the Opposition benches. Sounding reassuringly sensible, he suggested that the rules of this debate should be that there would be no accusations hurled at each other about who did what and when. They should concentrate on solving a problem that has become a national health emergency.
To tell you the truth, I nearly fell off my chair when I heard him finally raise an issue that will resonate with ordinary Indians. So far, he has lost elections not because of votes being stolen, but because he has raised mostly issues that have been pointed personal attacks on the Prime Minister. In the 2019 Lok Sabha election, he accused Modi of taking bribes in the Rafale deal. Through that campaign, he and his sister wandered about waving a toy fighter jet, making the point that the “chowkidar” was a “chor”. In last year’s Lok Sabha election, he waved a copy of the Constitution at his rallies and said that he was doing this to assure voters that he would save it from Modi. In state elections since then, he has banged on about votes being stolen. He appears not to have noticed that Modi is Prime Minister because it is his personal charisma that the BJP has used to win elections.
When Rahul made “vote chori” the main issue in Bihar, he showed that he had no idea of the history of elections in our poorest state. No idea at all that before EVM machines came to be used, ballot boxes were routinely looted from strongrooms and polling booths were controlled by criminals. It surprised nobody, except him and his courtiers, that voters remained impervious to his demand that the Prime Minister resign on the grounds that he had stolen elections. In Hindi, the slogan was catchy “Vote chor, gaddi chhod”, but you need more than catchy slogans to win elections.
It is my fervent hope that Rahul Gandhi now raises many more real issues. It is not just the air of our cities that is polluted, almost everything else as well. In Delhi, there are mountains of festering garbage that exude poisonous gases into the atmosphere, and nobody has managed to do anything about this despite promised deadlines. Nobody seems able to clean the filthy water of the Yamuna despite thousands of crore rupees of taxpayers’ money being poured into “cleaning” this river. Then there is the ugly truth that most Indian cities look like slums. Why? If poorer countries in south-east Asia have managed to handle problems of urbanisation, why is it so hard for India to follow their best practices?
There are other issues that should be at the top of the Opposition’s list of priorities. Since Modi became Prime Minister, there has been more investment in roads, airports, ports and other infrastructure than ever before. What has not happened is investment in human beings. Government schools remain as bad as they were under Congress rule, as do government hospitals and, instead of investing in these things, the BJP has now discovered the art of buying votes with welfare schemes that materialise miraculously on the eve of elections. If anyone tells you that in Bihar, the Rs 10,000 that women were given just before voting did not make a huge difference, do not believe them. In Maharashtra, it was the same story with the gift of Rs 1,500 a month to our ‘beloved sisters’. Money for distributing largesse comes out of funds that would be much better spent on improving the abysmal conditions in which most Indians are forced to live.
Why do issues that directly impact people’s lives not get debated in Parliament? Frankly, I did not see the point of the Vande Matram debate. The Prime Minister led the debate by saying that because young people needed to become acquainted with the history and power of the song of our freedom movement that the debate was necessary. If the Prime Minister had an interest in Indian popular music, he would have noticed that young people are very familiar with the song. On India’s 50th birthday in 1997, A R Rahman released an album called ‘Vande Matram’.
In this album, the song in which he uses Vande Matram to praise our beloved motherland became such a mega hit that it continues to be the song most identified with Rahman. I remember that it came out on August 12, 1997, and on Independence Day, three days later I was at a dinner party in Delhi where we listened to it all night and like good Indian patriots danced to it till dawn. The debate in Parliament was meaningless especially when there are so many more important issues that need to be discussed. Like our filthy air.
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