Travesty of democracy

It was a sad day in Delhi when Members of Parliament (MPs) became a nasty mob inside the House, hurling dirty accusations, shouting slogans, breaking glass, ripping out mikes, and then to top it all, using pepper spray that had their colleagues rushing out of the Lok Sabha; at least a couple landed in the hospital for urgent medical aid.

And why? Because of the proposed bill seeking to divide Andhra Pradesh into the Seemandhra and Telangana regions. The MP who used pepper spray went on to justify it, saying this was a defensive weapon used by women to protect themselves. And he was protecting himself from the MPs who were trying to beat him up. He clearly expected that, which is why he brought it with him to parliament –– a place for a sober and intense debate and not an akhara for fisticuffs, with even knives being brandished by the supposed representatives of the people.

India was aghast as the scenes were replayed on television, with ironically, most of the MPs involved in the ugly fracas, quite happy at having got their moment in the sun. Politics has become so dirty that these men actually felt that by turning proceedings in the Lok Sabha into a street brawl, they had scored with their constituents and could return to their region, flexing their muscles at having ‘told them off’. What a sad commentary on the times, when those elected to represent us in parliament prefer violence to debate.

These scenes are not just confined to parliament, but are reported widely from the state assemblies as well, where it is becoming increasingly common for the state leaders to resort to violence at the drop of a hat. In fact, while the Lok Sabha MPs were slugging it out, similar scenes were reported from the Delhi Assembly where the fledgling Aam Aadmi Party government was attacked by the combined might of both the BJP and the Congress. Arvind Kejriwal dismissed this as an attempt to divert attention from the state government’s direct hit at the big industrialist Mukesh Ambani and Reliance, the two reported beneficiaries of his largesse, coming together to demand the resignation of the state’s Law Minister, Somnath Bharti, for attacking African residents in the nation’s capital.

The Congress government did a shoddy job of delivering the Telangana promise. For years, the ‘should we, should we not’ approach had created sufficient trouble in Andhra Pradesh, with large-scale violence reported from Hyderabad by groups demanding Telangana, and then, more recently, from groups against the bifurcation of the state. The respective claims over Hyderabad also gave an edge to these protests, with the government –– at both the centre and the state –– at the time keeping mum over the issue and thereby adding to the fury.

The Congress’s indecision has taken a heavy toll. And the manner in which it finally pushed through the Bill in the Lok Sabha before the forthcoming elections was bound to elicit strong protests. Congress Chief Minister Kiran Reddy has already brought his protest to Delhi on this, and will join the demonstrators expected to take to the streets on this issue.

Sadly, as reported in the online daily The Citizen, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Congress President Sonia Gandhi and Congress scion Rahul Gandhi did not attend the Lok Sabha when the Telangana Bill was introduced, following the advice to stay away because of the expected violence. The result was mayhem with the ruling party, which has been divided on this issue, completely directionless as its top leaders were absent from the House.

There is something drastically wrong with the kind of persons who are fielded to contest the elections. Clearly, muscle power and money power prevails, and serious debate on serious issues has become the casualty. This old adage that people get the government they deserve is really bunkum. Because if people are not given a choice and have to choose from the candidates that parties like to favour, then their selection is really little more than a Hobson’s choice. Electoral reforms are being spoken of for a long time now, but nothing really has been done on the ground to curtail the influence of money and goon power. Political parties succumb to pressure, with clean candidates seen as losing prospects. These scenes in parliament are only going to get worse unless the political system is overhauled. It is tragic that even after the dust settled, the MPs violating all norms stood up before the television cameras and justified their behaviour as being right! What a pathetic, sad, tragic travesty of democracy.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 15^th, 2014.

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