A Pyrrhic Victory - (India Currents (USA), 12/06/2002)

-- By Dasu Krishnamoorty

The BJP government has won the censure motion. Outside the parliament house, the opposition leaders claimed that they had won. What did the two win? The government won the day and the opposition won their demand for a debate. But the people have lost, a fact that did not bother either the government or the opposition. See, Narendra Modi is still there. People continue to be killed in Gujarat. The hidden agenda was: for the government to hang on to power and for the opposition to score a point. Gujarat provided this opportunity. The many peace marches that Vajpayee and his company and Sonia Gandhi and her coterie undertake are, in fact, to prevent the wounds from healing.

Look at what this mega political charade cost Parliament and the people. Before the censure vote came, nearly 10 days of standoff between the government and the opposition cost the nation an avoidable 21 crore rupees, according to one estimate. This is like a drop in the ocean compared to the guillotine on demands of all ministries and departments, except agriculture, totalling 7,68,836 crore rupees without any discussion. The tactics of members from both sides abridged a full discussion of the budget, emblematic of the government's accountability to people and parliament. That's a loss for democracy.

Discussion, indeed, was frustrated or foiled through dubious methods, which amounted to denying the people the opportunity to know how public funds have been spent and for what purpose. A guillotine is a gag on the voice of the people and renders unnecessary the elaborate and expensive exercise of holding elections. Far-reaching amendments will be rushed through without meaningful discourse. In one sense, the opposition has provided an opportunity to the government to skirt a debate on crucial issues. The one institution that we can still flaunt as evidence of democracy is in peril. It has now ceased to be a forum where the concerns of the people are aired. It is now a battleground where everything is fair, from uprooting the mikes, tearing up documents to invading the well of the House and shouting abusive slogans.

The great circular mansion that Edward Lutyens built is haunted by anarchists who settle a point not by debate but by combat. The frequent disruption of parliament has begun to tell on its value as the country's supreme lawmaking body and a forum where people's problems are discussed. Its members are making history instead of laws, by storming the well of the House, staging dharnas, and shouting questionable slogans, all to register protest or seek to move an adjournment motion.

Parliament figured recently in the Supreme Court too. Members invited ridicule on themselves when the apex court administered a mild but direct reproof to parliament. The court was hearing a petition of the government seeking court indulgence in permitting limited worship by kar sevaks at Ayodhya when the counsel for certain Muslim organisations began airing their points of view. The court reprimanded the counsel saying, "This is not parliament where one could go to the well of the House and raise the voice. Counsel would be given full opportunity at the next hearing." Though it is unusual for the apex court to chide the highest lawmaking body, members of parliament seem to have earned it by their undignified performance.

The unproductive face-off between the government and the opposition has taken an extremely heavy toll of parliamentary time, more than 80 hours this time. The consequences of such face-off for the nation are difficult to quantify or evaluate. The railway budget was passed last year in the Lok Sabha without a word said on either side of the issue, heralding a bizarre chapter in Parliament's history. What is visible without effort is the erosion of the dignity of the House and the office of the Speaker, indicating that the time has come to determine who is responsible to whom for obstructing business in both houses and physically preventing a debate. People are left wondering if they have made the correct electoral choices. This government has another year or it may go even earlier. In the event of a new party coming to power, there is no guarantee that conditions will improve. Inside parliament, government and opposition will swap benches but behave in the same manner. Outside the house, communal riots will continue to surface as frequently as the politicians will them.

Exchanges in parliament are not new. In the past too, the House was witness to exchanges between Jawaharlal Nehru and giants like Ram Manohar Lohia, Shyam Prasad Mukherjee, and H.V. Kamath. But learning, wit, and repartee then informed the debate. It never touched the level of the street discourse. Today, the repeated interruption of legislative business to accommodate doubtful agenda suggests a serious bankruptcy of issues and obsessive enthusiasm for divisive politics, which is continued outside parliament's granite structures by forces indifferent to priorities screaming for notice.

The borders are alive with confrontation and militancy, a situation that will greet the opposition parties also when they come to power. Rowdy scenes such as the ones parliament has become familiar with in recent weeks will only end up showing the present government as a martyr. Many of the issues that have blocked debate in the House have never figured at the time of electioneering where votes were sought to alleviate poverty, illiteracy, and backwardness. These issues have become victims of a new pattern of parliamentary behaviour.

It is the same story session after session and riot after riot. No nuances. No niceties. The government has a majority and so will not budge. The opposition has lung and muscle power and so will not relent. The losers will be the millions of people, including the minorities, whose living conditions have never improved despite such demonstrative and raucous concern for a masjid or a mandir in parliament. More than the mobs, blameworthy are the representatives of the people intent on forging constituencies of voters based on faith. They have succeeded in doing it as evident from the earlier successes of the BJP and the present victories of non-BJP parties. Both have thrived on politics of conflict. Has the level of communal strife come down despite holding up parliamentary business? On the other hand, the communal divide has widened.

The record of the members outside parliament is hardly flattering. We have now a democracy without stability because the loyalties of members of parliament are constantly shifting. With the regional parties capturing power in the states and with the erosion of political morality, the fortunes of the ruling party or alliance at the Centre depend heavily on opportunistic compromises lubricated by promises of office and exoneration of economic and even criminal offences in return for support. Each of the state parties in power plays the wait-and-see game when the fortunes of political power at the centre are in a flux. It happened this time also at the time of censure debate.

Bluntly put, it is horse-trading, which wins the day. This will explain how Vijay Mallya could garner 48 votes to become a Rajya Sabha member when parties sponsoring him had only strength of 24 votes. It was evident that Mallya had managed to make inroads into both the Congress and BJP vote banks.

Discourse as a democratic institution is in jeopardy. The Congress, with its history of parliamentary rectitude, must dissociate itself from unruly elements and fight its battles with the NDA government in the same dignified tradition of the opposition in the Nehru era. The victories it has won in several states recently should help it overcome political frustration, which is the main cause of the kind of scenes parliament has seen of late and may see in the future.