As I watched another session of Parliament wasted because of the Opposition parties’ street-fighting style of debate, an odd conspiracy theory occurred to me. Could the Congress party be acting as a secret agent for Narendra Modi? Or are its leaders too removed from reality to notice that every time they shout slogans when they should be making laws, they harm themselves and not the Prime Minister? He sits quietly with a smug half-smile on his face and watches until the sloganeering gets so out of control that both Houses end up adjourned. Again. And again, session after session.
According to ‘vital stats’ sent to me by a think tank with a very long name, the Lok Sabha functioned for 29% of its scheduled time and the Rajya Sabha for 34%. And, while his MPs were disrupting Parliament, the Leader of the Opposition wandered off to Bihar on yet another ‘yatra’, perhaps forgetting that some very important laws were being passed without debate. It should come as no surprise when I tell you that there are serious political pundits in Delhi who say, wearily wiping the sweat from their foreheads, that Modi’s greatest asset is Rahul Gandhi.
The Prime Minister began his third term in office, much humbled by the voters having denied him a full majority. Those of us who have the tedious job of observing politicians (instead of glamorous, sexy movie stars) noticed that Modi seemed to almost physically shrink when he discovered that his boast of bringing the BJP back with more than 400 seats had been tossed into the garbage bin by Indian voters. Then, there was some serious introspection at the highest levels of the BJP and the Sangh Parivar. Humility became part of political strategy. The RSS chief declared publicly that those who genuinely served the nation did not take personal credit or make silly boasts. I paraphrase so Hindutva hysterics desist from yet another attack on my character and patriotism.
In a parliamentary democracy, there is no institution more important than parliament because it represents the will of the people. So, when our elected representatives spend their time on protests and placards instead of on debates, they let down those who voted for them. There are vital issues that need to be addressed in these times when India seems to be on its knees externally and falling apart internally. Bad governance and corrupt practices, especially at the municipal and state level, have caused whole towns to be washed away in the Himalayas and Mumbai spent all last week drowning.
In Delhi, where I sit and write on a very rainy day, I have driven on streets so filthy I was happy not to need to get out of my car. All along one street were garbage dumps that seemed to have flowed into each other and made a nauseating panorama of putrefying urban trash. It was not so happy a situation if you were driving either because the rain had turned streets into broken ribbons of dangerously deep potholes. These might seem like simple municipal problems to our exalted parliamentarians, but when was the last time there was a debate on how municipal governance must be improved?
While on the subject, may I add that I cannot remember the last time that governance was discussed in either House of Parliament. Opposition leaders like to blame this absence of debate on them ‘not being allowed to speak’, but there are ways of forcing the government into a debate by putting pressure inside Parliament instead of shrieking and sloganeering outside. There are rules under which discussions are held, but the Leader of the Opposition appears to believe that he can decide what these rules should be.
What is worrying is that because the Opposition chooses to remain absent, laws get passed without any debate at all. This latest Bill that seeks to keep criminals out of the highest echelons of politics is more than slightly dodgy. The Modi government has shown how it can use its law enforcement agencies as political weapons, so it is scary what could happen if a chief minister can be dismissed without a crime being proven against him in a court of law.
This newspaper deserves full credit for its excellent reportage on the Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision in Bihar. It is clearly a clumsy and hasty exercise and Opposition leaders are right to demand answers, but surely it would have been more effective to have a public discussion with the Election Commission than to go around yelling ‘vote chor’ at public rallies. To come back, though, in these final sentences to the functioning of Parliament may I say that I really cannot abide any more wasted parliament sessions.
Our MPs have been elected to be inside the house and that is where they should be. The Speaker of the Lok Sabha likes to lecture them on good behaviour and reminds them often that the whole country is watching. Instead of this, would it not be more effective to deprive those who cause disruptions to be denied their daily wages and their privileges? Why should taxpayers pay elected representatives when they are not doing their job? And to return, more seriously, to the point I made at the beginning of this piece in jest. It is time our Opposition leaders noticed how much they have helped the Prime Minister.
