Parliament needs more Subramanian Swamys, fewer Ravindra Gaikwads
It is amusing that someone like Ravindra Gaikwad, who glories himself on rank and bad behaviour, should have received such ridiculously disproportionate national attention. All of us together have made him a dystopic national fetish.
He was not a celebrity before the infamous event. He is now a household name, sitting pretty even on the lips of toddlers and infants.
To me the misdemeanour of this member of Parliament was not such a big issue. I have come to expect this sort of thing, really. At the very best, it is only a secondary issue.
But there is a primary issue about which we maintain a state of stony silence.
That issue is the overall decline of our parliamentary culture and the stature of "people’s representatives". We elect the likes of Ravindra Gaikwad. He acts in character, with the sort of outcomes that are wholly predictable. Then we sound surprised and aggrieved; whereas we should be apologising to the soul of India for so rankly misusing and abusing our ballots to invite third-raters to parliamentary distinction.
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| We are as much to blame as the Gaikwads of this world are, for the present pathetic state of affairs. |
We are as much to blame as the Gaikwads of this world are, for the present pathetic state of affairs.
It is time we talked about the decline of the stature and standard of our parliamentary assets. Also, high time we addressed the urgent task of raising the stock of those who we accredit as our representatives. NOTA is there, after all.
Adolf Hitler talks bitterly of the lamentable decline in the human stuff and stature that Parliament of his times tolerated. He found most of them incapable of discharging their duties. A vast majority of the parliamentary deputies did not have either the knowledge or the sense of responsibility or the stature to make their membership in Parliament worth anything at all. They came, he writes in Mein Kampf, only for their daily allowances. Hitler is not my role model, but I endorse this concern of his.
Hitler writes admiringly of the British Parliament. Not surprising. Think of a Pitt, a Burke, a Mill, a Churchill, even a Thatcher, representing you. Think of MPs like them participating in the proceedings of Parliament. Think of being ruled by men and women of their pedigree.
St Stephen’s College used to have an interesting custom called “After Dinner Talks”. A speaker of distinction (mind you, only a speaker of distinction) will join the students (in college always called “junior members”) and address them, after the dinner, in the College Hall. Piloo Mody, member of Parliament, used to be one of our regular speakers. What a time we had of it.
Gradually, the college had to discard this valuable practice. It became increasingly difficult to get speakers, especially parliamentarians, worth listening to: those who combined scholarship with stature. By early 1990s the custom was abandoned.
Once malpractices — money, muscle power — trespass into the electoral arena, bad coins begin to drive out good ones. Today, it is not only difficult, it is impossible for a person of principles and stature to win an election even to a state Assembly. The electoral route has been thoroughly vitiated.
There was some hope, given the farsightedness of the architects of our enlightened Constitution, to make up for this impoverishment through nominations. That too is a heartbreak.
Who are our nominated MPs in Parliament?
Sachin Tendulkar and Rekha are two out of the 12 (or 16 per cent) of the nominated members. What are their contributions to any debate?
Do they have time to attend the sessions?
We may not agree with Subramanian Swamy on everything or on anything. But he does the homework for his fireworks.
He has something to say on everything. And he knows how to say it. You may not like what he says. I don’t. But I wish we had few more of Swamys and I wish they were cosmopolitan in their outlook.
Parliament is the temple of our democracy. It reflects our genius as a nation. So, if the stature and dignity of its members and proceedings decline over time, it should make us worry. Compare the first Parliament with its present counterpart.
Do we have reasons to be reassured that we are indeed progressing and not regressing?
I remember travelling from Delhi to Cochin by GT Express in the early 1980s. The train got inordinately delayed. My fellow passenger was a member of Parliament from Kerala (don’t be shocked. MPs used to be nearly humble and humane in those, innocent days). The meal timings went awry. No food could be served for much of the journey. The train superintendent knew that an MP was on board. He came in person to ensure that the MP was not unduly inconvenienced. Offered to have food — no more than chapattis and dhal — made for him. But the MP would not eat, unless the rest of us in the cabin (not the whole compartment) were also served.
Sounds, now, like a distant fairy tale, no?
The present generation will not have such experiences. Which MP will travel by train (unless there is an airlines boycott slapped on him)? Which MP today will, under similar circumstances, insist on the immediate fellow travellers also being taken care of?
If anything, our beloved representatives would show off their distinction as compared to their fellow passengers, who are abandoned to hunger and accidental deprivation.
I have affectionate memories of Pala KM Mathew, the prolific author of children’s literature, who was always available to me in anything of value that I wanted to do in Delhi. I could count of PA Sangma, PJ Kurien, Abraham Charles (who represented Trivandrum Parliamentary constituency) and Dennis, MP from Tamil Nadu.
In 1996, I was chair of a world conference on education, under the auspices of the Colleges and Universities of the Anglican Communion (CUAC), at which 37 countries were represented. I wanted Sangma to inaugurate the event. He was out of station on that day.
“I am back in three days,” he told me on phone. I decided to get him for the valedictory. He drove straight from the airport to St Stephen’s College and charmed the whole conference with his spontaneity and conviviality.
We sadly miss people like the ones I have mentioned. They were not, except Salve, intellectual giants. But they were fellow human beings, whose chappals would not fly higher than their feet. They would neither assault their fellow human beings nor brag about having done it.
This was not a century, but only a few years ago.
The extent to which we have lost such human qualities in public life, and the rate at which they keep sinking, should be a matter of utmost worry, especially to those who wish to live in a safe and sane society.
Shouldn’t we?