Opinion Express View on Parliament logjam: Manipur Hour in House

The no-confidence motion against the Narendra Modi government in Parliament is evidently meant not to topple it — the numbers rule out that outcome — but to hold it to account for the continuing crisis on its watch in Manipur. It is welcome. It breaks the impasse that had built up since the start of the Monsoon Session on Manipur, with the government stonewalling and the Opposition insisting on a PM-or-nobody-else debate. Of course, the government claimed it was ready to talk. Union Home Minister Amit Shah wrote a letter to leaders of the Opposition in both Houses, urging bipartisan cooperation and dialogue. But the Home Minister’s purported white flag was fraying before it could possibly fly — Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke outside Parliament on Manipur, but was silent on the Opposition’s legitimate demand that he speak inside it, and the government was unwilling for a discussion under a rule that entailed voting. The PM continued to target the parties of the Opposition, taking the name of the newly minted Opposition front “INDIA” with a host of unsavoury others like the Indian Mujahideen, East India Company and PFI, even as the Home Minister invited them. These were arguably not the best conditions for government-Opposition talks on Manipur.

This political stalemate has been a terrible let-down. The crisis in Manipur has gone on for nearly three months, with over a hundred dead and thousands displaced. The video of the May 4 sexual assault by a mob of two women in B Phainom village in Kangpokpi district has brought home to the entire country the horrific toll it continues to take. That Parliament is in session, but this most urgent issue could not enter the House, that a larger collective reckoning was held hostage to a short-term confrontational politics, did not speak well of the responsiveness and responsibility of parliamentary politics and institutions in a moment of crisis. This, after all, was a time for parties across the spectrum to set aside the hostilities and noise and participate in the difficult search for peace and resolution. It is the time for Opposition to ask questions, and for government to attempt to answer them. At the very least, it is the cue for people’s representatives, across parties, to tell the people of Manipur that they can see and hear them, that they stand with them in their period of suffering.

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Now that the no-confidence motion has been admitted by the Lok Sabha Speaker, all parties must make themselves heard on Manipur. Accountability must be fixed, and a way forward found. There are times in a nation’s life when parties and players are called upon to rise above the narrow and the partisan, and respond in more encompassing ways. This is that moment. Government and Opposition must not miss it in Parliament. Manipur needs nothing less.