The Contemporary Argumentative Indians
The familiar headline
“Parliament is adjourned” carries no suspense any longer. It is the same story
during every session of the Parliament- a ritual that had been in practice
since the dying days of UPAII. Shouts and counter shouts forcing the Speaker to
adjourn Parliament have been justified as they are a part of the
constitutionally sanctioned means for the opposition to stall the functioning
of the Parliament. The daily drama in the Parliament has the familiar ring of the
“Times Now 9 pm show with Arnab Goswami” except that it is played not in the TV
studios but in the privileged and sanctimonious theatre of the people’s
representatives. Except for a few MPs who exercise their lungs shouting and who
exercise their limbs by running to the Well and flaying their arms, for the
majority of our elected leaders, it is a paid holiday. Even at the cost of
committing perjury, I would like to add, MPs at the Parliament are well
provided for that includes a good daily allowance, subsidized lavish lunches in
the canteen and free transport facility. Since for most days Parliament does
not function, MPs enjoy a sinecure job .The budget session in hot summer, the
rainy monsoon session and the short winter session intended for conducting legislative business often get
disrupted with discussions veering away
from deliberations on matters of public interest to mutual attack on each other
by the ruling party and the opposition.
The passing of the budget with minor amendments to the finance bill and
pre-determined rollbacks is annually done without heated exchanges as it
relates to the financial interest of the Parliamentarians –their huge salaries,
perks and funds for disbursal in their respective constituencies (MPLADS-Member
of Parliament Local Area Development Schemes). Rarely the Finance Bills are
withheld which brings a smug and satisfied look in our MPs for having
discharged their legislative responsibility for the year. As for the rest of
the sessions, it is one of cacophony and pandemonium where everyone wears
his/her morals on the sleeves and indulges in picking holes in the sleeves of
the opponents. The two major contending parties-the numerically strong
right-wing BJP and the abysmally weak left
of centre Congress are daily at daggers drawn over trivial issues, deliberately
to avoid discussions on serious issues
which will cause huge embarrassment to
both sides. The mutual attacks are mainly the choice feeds for the insatiable hunger of the media
that seizes on them to hold forth and pontificate, while simultaneously donning
the three-in-one cap of prosecutor, judge and executioner and lambasting all
the participants of the debate who are willing sacrificial lambs for the money
and exposure they get in return.
The
truth is Parliament and media discussions today have turned out to be more of a
circus show except that the feats performed are not physical but verbal feats
that in turn are music for the ears of
the loyalists and off tune for those in the opposition. The issues that are
taken are those that are calumnious in nature with charges flying thick and
fast with no one to affirm the truth or the falsehood behind them. For a week these
issues are debated in the Parliament and in the media with no one becoming
wiser at the end of it all. Then they are dropped like hot potatoes as soon as a
new allegation crops up providing fresh ammunition for another cacophonic
debate and discussion. What is most surprising is all these allegations have a
short shelf life. There was the Vyapam scam, Gujarat State Petro chemical scam,
Lalit Modi episode involving top BJP women leaders, FTII controversy, Rohit Vemula’s
death at Hyderabad Central University, Kanhaiya’s imprisonment and the anti
national sequel, the tampering of tapes of the JNU episode, Mallaya’s British
connection, the current Augusta Westland scam and many more with the ruling BJP
tracing all the ills to Congress leaders(-in particular the Gandhis, as a part
of their Congress Mukht Bharat andolan)- and the opposition, in turn raking up a host of charges, in particular
about freedom of expression, freedom to eat, freedom to live -all pointing to the ruling party’s subtle move towards a
fascist regime. But despite the decibel ringing high for a week, no conclusive
evidence emerges and the proverbial short memory attributed to the mindless public
can be well and applied to our
politicians. There is nothing for anyone to affirm, there is nothing for anyone
to deny, nothing to allege, nothing to prove and yet the humungous desire to
hold forth on these non governance issues and to pitchfork them centre stage in and
outside the Parliament. Drought in Maharashtra and Karnataka, spiraling food
prices, gross unemployment of educated Ph.Ds and MBAs ,not to speak of less and least qualified young men and women,
shrinking rupee and rising dollar, blow hot blow cold polices with regard to
Pakistan and China, environmental pollution( except for bashing odd-even scheme
of AAP), rising crime graph in the country etc
are all relegated to the status of non issue so as to keep the debated irrelevant issues boiling hot,
albeit for a short period. Perception and not pertinence is important,
impressions and not authenticity matter.
Listening to these debates or reading
about them in the dailies, I am reminded of the famous comment made by Samuel
Johnson on Addison, his contemporary who had written three Latin poem . In his
inimitable style, Johnson writes: “Three of his Latin poems are upon subjects
on which perhaps he(Addison) would not have ventured to have written in his own
language- The Battle of the Pigmies and
Cranes; The Barometer; and A Bowling green. When the matter is low or
scanty, a dead language, in which nothing is mean because nothing is familiar,
affords great conveniences; and by the sonorous magnificence of Roman
syllables, the writer conceals penury of
thought, and want of novelty, often from the reader, and often from himself.”
Maybe this article will come handy to kick start a debate in the Parliament and
also in the Media for politicians and
media anchors to question the propriety
of such sacrilegious writing against hon’ble members elected to Parliament, a
venerable institution established by the Constitution.
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