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VIEWPOINT: FIFTH COLUMN
Not House Broken
Whatever muck they fling outside
it, members should maintain order in Parliament
By Tavleen Singh
 If
you watch the proceedings of Parliament on TV, as many politically aware
Indians do these days, the overwhelming sound you hear is a piercing,
discordant caterwauling. Then, what usually happens is the Speaker stands
up with an angry expression on his face, glowers at the mob fighting in
the well of the House for his attention and announces an adjournment.
After the Tehelka bombshell, this happened every day of the last session,
costing taxpayers Rs 16,568 a minute or Rs 9.94 lakh an hour for nothing
gained except noise. No business was conducted, no debate on corruption
was remotely possible and when the MPs had finished shouting inside the
House they proceeded to the steps of Parliament to indulge themselves
in a round of fisticuffs in the full glare of TV cameras.
If this is the example of "debate",
of democracy at work that Parliament sets, it needs little imagination
to see what is likely to happen in our state assemblies. It is not uncommon
any more for our state legislators to throw things at each other and assault
each other physically. On one particularly ugly occasion, please remember,
an attempt was made to pull off Jayalalitha's sari in the Tamil Nadu Assembly.
We are shocked for the moment, we gasp in horror, political pundits pontificate
on the decline in standards of debate, but over the years we have reconciled
ourselves to this being our political culture. The result, of course,
as opinion polls indicate, is that the average Indian has developed such
contempt for politicians that he holds them responsible for all our problems.
A poll in one of our newspapers recently revealed that 90 per cent of
those contacted held politicians responsible for corruption but less than
10 per cent thought bureaucrats were equally to blame. How lucky for our
bureaucrats that they do not have to perform their duties on TV except
when tehelka.com catches them in action.
 More
seriously, though, is it not time that some effort was made to stem the
rot that emanates from Parliament? It can be done quite easily as I found
out from talking to Subhash Kashyap, who was secretary-general of the
Lok Sabha from 1983 to 1990 and is the author of a book in two volumes
called Parliamentary Law, Privileges, Practices and Precedents. According
to him, the Indian Constitution gives the Speaker of the House sufficient
powers to prevent our MPs from behaving like rowdies. Unruly behaviour-shouting
slogans, coming into the well of the House-constitutes a breach of parliamentary
privilege and contempt of the House and punishment can be severe.
The Speaker can order an unruly MP to withdraw
from the House. If he continues to misbehave he can be named and removed
physically if required and if this does not chasten him he can be suspended
and a bye-election ordered for his seat. Kashyap remembers that in 1989,
63 MPs were named on a single day. This could lead, as it did then, to
the entire Opposition resigning but if the government of the day has the
political will it can order elections only to the seats they have resigned
from, making life very difficult for them.
Parliament, after the wasted session, is now
in recess but due to convene again soon and if rumours in Delhi are to
be believed, the Opposition intends once more to use disruption rather
than debate to embarrass the Government. Can we hope that this time someone
will have the political will to take action?
Street fighting has its place in politics but
surely not in the Lok Sabha. What we need desperately in Parliament is
debate. Not just on corruption, to which an entire session could be devoted,
but on the Government's Kashmir policy, on judicial reform, on the environment,
the budget proposals, on agriculture policy, obsolete laws, administrative
changes and a thousand other things.
Politicians like to lament the absence of a
"civil society" in India. It is not just our fault, they tell
us on those endless TV talk shows, the people also have responsibilities.
They appear not to understand that for a civil society to develop we need
some semblance of civil behaviour in our highest law-making body.
If the MP from Siwan can show such contempt
for the law as to get into a gun battle with the police, as he did recently,
why should ordinary people be expected to behave better? What kind of
political culture can we expect in our panchayats if they look to Parliament
for their role model? True, the Lok Sabha has in recent times seen some
unusual law-makers. The Bandit Queen is an MP, and till not so long ago
the wife of Indira Gandhi's assassin Beant Singh was also a member of
the House. If political parties feel this is the kind of person who should
be making our laws there is little that we can do about it. But once they
are elected the least we can expect is that they behave in exemplary fashion.
It's time for order in the House.
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