HVK Archives: House of shame
House of shame - The Times of India
Editorial
()
25 July 1997
Title: House of shame
Author: Editorial
Publication: The Times of India
Date: July 25, 1997
Even by the abysmally low standards Parliament has set for itself,
Wednesday's events must rank as extraordinary. For it is not every day that
a presiding officer threatens to resign or refuses to adjourn the House.
That the normally sanguine Mr P A Sangma felt constrained to express
himself so strongly goes to show there is only so much even a patient man
can bear. Our honourable MPs were possibly puzzled by Mr Sangma's outburst,
used as they are to treating the august House as something of a boxing
ring. After all, what Mr Sangma was witness to on the opening day of the
monsoon session was merely a replay of what has been happening over the
years in the House : Members outshouting each other, crowding into the well
of the House and disrupting proceedings, all with the express purpose of
securing an adjournment which would leave them free to engage in the only
pursuit they revel in - politicking. The earlier presiding officers
suffered all this, and worse. The Speaker of the 11th Lok Sabha has made
it clear he will not. Somewhere or sometime the bluff had to be called and
Mr Sangma's singular achievement lies in deciding that he will be the one
to bell the cat. Two points emerge from Mr Sangma's observations. One, any
disruption of the House beyond a limit must be treated not as legitimate
protest but as brazen disrespect for an institution which is one of the
three pillars of the Constitution. Two, as an elected representative, the
primary duty of an MP is to conduct business on behalf of his or her voters
and not to score brownie points against rivals. In refusing to adjourn the
House, Mr Sangma was not just standing firm in the face of blackmail but
asserting the supremacy of parliamentary business.
Whether the significance of Mr Sangma's overdue dissent will percolate to
our thick-skinned MPs is debatable. Indeed, so often have our MPs, or at
least a section, used force and intimidation in place of argument and
logic, and so easily do they push important business from session to
session, that to do it any other way must be unthinkable for them. Not
long ago, members of a self-styled 'shouting brigade' in the Rajya Sabha
had reduced outgoing President Shanker Dayal Sharma to tears. Quite
simply, then, our MPs will shout where they must listen and disrupt where
they must debate. Yesterday's unruly scenes, for instance, exposed both the
blatant opportunism of our political parties and their disregard for rules.
The Congress targeted the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance in Maharashtra even while
maintaining a studied silence on the Bihar happenings. For the latter, Mr
Laloo Prasad Yadav was evil personified, as if their own conduct in the
recent police firing was above reproach. Clearly, there are no issues here.
And yet, it wasn't always like this. We have had veteran parliamentarians
like Jyotirmoy Bosu, Feroze Gandhi, Nath Pai and even Ram Manohar Lohia
discuss and debate issues with exemplary sobriety. The tragedy in all this
is that it is the current House which is scheduled to usher in the 50th
year of Indian independence. We can only hope that our MPs will show that
memorable yet solemn occasion the respect it deserves. Mr Sangma has taken
the first step, it is now for the leaders of the respective political
parties to take the cue; if they do not, the nation and the world outside
might conclude that Parliament as a whole understands only the language of
the street.
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