Democracy adjourned

Bills are stuck. Files are closed. Eyes are shut. Minds are rotting. Welcome to the monsoon session of parliament which has remained paralyzed for 12 days in a row. Tomorrow, the monsoon session gets over. BJP all along said – “The Prime Minister must resign. We won’t let the Parliament function until he does.” What kind of childish parliamentary practice is this? Next time they might as well say – “Voters give us a majority or we won’t allow the legislature to meet.” When did two wrongs become right?

Stalling the parliament is a relatively new practice. It all started in the 1980s when Sanjay Gandhi went all out to show his might. Slowly we have boiled down to a democracy where, leave alone the BJP and Congress, all local parties across the country are busy stalling the legislature. Interestingly, the BJP has lost a golden opportunity to show how it was different. If the BJP had strongly supported the idea of parliament proceeding with meaningful debates, it could have won hearts of millions. The tragedy of India is that we do not have a single party today that puts people’s interest before immediate partisan greed.

I used to wonder why many of my politically conscious friends have started believing in anarchy. While Anarchism is a notorious theory, is has extremely strong and logical grounds. It says that government is intrinsically evil and it is preferable and possible to abolish it; that people are good by nature but are corrupted by the governments. Well, if you ask me – I believe that a government functions only as much as it’s people and somewhere it is I and you who are to blame for this mess. But I often wonder why should we tame a body of goons and hooligans which officially spends the national wealth at the rate of Rs 26,000 a minute and yet refuses to function?