Power corrupts, and the lust for power corrupts absolutely, said Mr. Ram Jethmalani in the uproarious Upper House, as the tumultuous theatrics of the Parliament, emblazoned across national television, left the hyperventilating broadcast media and clueless citizenry baffled and bemused. A piece of legislation had rarely touched and tickled the chords of collective national consciousness. Smitten by the corruption bug and lobotomized by the Lokpal chimera, civil society was back at its arm-twisting ways.
The phantom of fast did return, albeit to a tepid turnout in Mumbai as the ‘Jokepal’ jamboree that encapsulated the nation four months back was conspicuous by its absence. The heated Winter Session, extended by two days to accommodate the legislative discourse witnessed some fantastic debates in both the Houses, and just when the crescendo threatened to cascade from romance to realism, it choked, literally and figuratively.
With the naysayers edging past the ayesayers in the Lower House to deny the constitutional status to the Bill, the Government hoped frantically (as they would want us to believe) for a turnaround two days later in the Rajya Sabha. What transpired was a session of red-herring, where the House, ironically replete with legal luminaries could as much but traipse around the contentious clauses. As many as 187 amendments were introduced, and as the half day long debate was dispersed by the harried Chair, the vitriolic blame game ensued. The ruling dispensation alleged that the sheer number of amendments, a lot of them contradictory, required a fair amount of time to be studied. The Opposition retorted by saying that the disruption caused by RJD’s Rajneeti Prasad (unwittingly named so) was choreographed and orchestrated. As the verbal volleys flew unabated from both ends, the lesser mortals shrugged their heads in dismay and returned to their dispassionate, cynical selves. At a stage where nothing overtly impinges its self consumed and self subsumed mundane business of life, the common man (and of course woman) has to wait for the Budget Session to witness a probable endgame.
In the meantime, the country’s crusader had a few pearls of wisdom to share. Anna Hazare’s restive and rhetorical riposte rejuvenated the civil society’s anti Congress bogey, as he squarely blamed the Home Minister of India for a misbegotten plan to arrest him prior to his famous fast in August. In a stark departure from their earlier non political stand, Team Anna announced their plans of canvassing against Congress in the upcoming Assembly polls. Will that translate into a Hisar encore is something political purists would love to look at.
The SP and BSP’s walk-out from voting in Lok Sabha throws up interesting propositions. While many view it as a mark of protest against the Opposition’s amendments, which invariably translates into support for the Congress, it must be borne in mind that the Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh are due next month. Allaying clearly with the Congress in Parliament then would have put SP, BSP and Congress on the same ideological plank at national level, thereby disturbing their political calculus in UP, a state where caste politics and social engineering have ensured the triumvirate can’t have shared sentiments. So when Mulayam Singh Yadav callously quipped “You know it” on being asked about the walk-out, there’s something more we would do well to know.
Meanwhile in Rajya Sabha, the TMC continued its merry ways of being a pricey, preening, disparaging ally that simply disagrees to agree at anything Congress comes up with. After the ignominious FDI and Teesta episodes, the TMC demanded the deletion of chapters on Lokayukta to preserve the autonomy of states. They had raised their reservations before the Standing Committee at the drafting stage itself, but surprisingly fell silent in the Lower House, only to return with a deafening note of discord in Rajya Sabha. The growing dissonance between the Congress and its major ally is interesting, and so are the perspective and probable sops the Congress could come up with to woo its most critical comrade. Whether it’s a definite ploy of an under pressure TMC (given the series of tragedies in West Bengal) to stamp a semblance of authority at the highest level of national politics is again a prospect frothing with infinite intrigue. The recent renaming of a building in Kolkata (named earlier after Indira Gandhi) is being viewed as yet another symbolic one-upmanship by the TMC, and the Youth Congress has made its displeasure clear.
In times when the deceptive demarcation between sham and symbolism is fast disappearing, the political paradigm finds itself in a state of flux. In a developing, dynamic democracy, more often than not, it’s also the perennial state. So while the clamour and cacophony of brilliance in Parliament didn’t lead to concurrent, concrete promises it generated, it made one thing pretty clear, that the task of legislation is a classified, constitutional assignment and the place to undertake it is the Parliament, not the pavements. We will, in all probability never know if the shindig in Rajya Sabha was a sham, but to believe that framing legislation on grounds of popular passion will pronounce panacea would be expecting too much. A parallel government and a parallel bureaucracy might appear a robust mechanism to some, but humongous, autonomous powers at the behest of an institution to counter corruption is an idea fraught with suicidal probabilities. Mr. Jethmalani’s reference won’t possibly find a pertinent context.
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