Indian Parliament: A life of brief glory

How sadly short-lived has been the relief over the end of the “Anna storm” on a reasonably constructive note! No sooner had this denouement been reached, and Parliament and Anna Hazare’s movement appeared to be on the same page, than the reverse process began, with little prospect of the downhill descent being stemmed.
On Saturday, August 27, when the settlement was clinched after day-long debates in both Houses, Parliament had risen to heights not seen in recent decades.

The high standard of the Rajya Sabha’s earlier
discussion on the motion for impeachment of Justice Soumitra Sen strengthened the expectation that Parliament might at last return to the ways it used to function during the Nehru era. That, alas, was not to be.
For, from Monday, August 29, proceedings of both Houses started being disrupted, as usual, most raucously. The BJP was irate because of the appointment of the Lokayukta in Gujarat by the state governor without consulting the council of ministers headed by the redoubtable Narendra Modi. The flip side of the story is that the issue of appointing a new Lokayukta had been before the state government for seven years, to no avail.
Whichever way this tussle is sorted out, one can be rest assured that various sections of MPs would find one reason or another, no matter how flimsy, to stand and shout, rush Lemmon-like to the well of the House and make Parliament dysfunctional. This time around there is an additional difficulty. The “sense of Parliament” accepted by Mr Hazare clearly implies that even those fed up with the political class have to show due respect to the dignity and authority of Parliament as an institution. Yet some hotheads in Team Anna made it a point to abuse parliamentarians in foul language. Parliament has retaliated by serving breach of privilege notices on three of them who are making defiant noises.
Moreover, the government has served a four-year-old notice to one of the trio, Arvind Kejriwal, for payment of over `9 lakhs income tax dues. No wonder, there are cries against the Congress-led government’s “vindictiveness reminiscent of the prelude to the Emergency”. At this rate the atmosphere is unlikely to be conducive to the speedy enactment of a demonstrably strong and effective Lokpal Bill. After all, Mr Hazare has personally condemned official action against Mr Kejriwal, former police officer Kiran Bedi and actor Om Puri.
Strangely, the Congress-led government chose this moment to deliver a blow to elementary democratic norms, of which the country hasn’t taken sufficient notice. Last week it was suddenly announced that sports minister Ajay Maken had brought before the Cabinet his draft National Sports Bill. Instead of being allowed to introduce it in Parliament, he was badly mauled by several senior ministers — both Congressmen and powerful allies in the UPA — each of whom has a big stake in running some major sports organisation or the other.
Among those who rubbished the proposed bill and pronounced anathema on its author were Sharad Pawar, the overlord of the mighty and tremendously wealthy Board for Control of Cricket in India (BCCI); C.P. Joshi, the boss of cricket in Rajasthan; Farooq Abdullah who plays the same role in Kashmir; Vilasrao Deshmukh, president of the Cricket Association in Maharashtra; Praful Patel, who runs the All-India Football Federation; and so on.
What they had to say against the bill before strangulating it is not the point at all. Indeed, they may be entirely right in saying that the bill was misconceived and unacceptable because it ran counter to the golden Olympics principle that sports should be “free of government control”. Understandably, they had no time for Mr Maken’s legitimate argument that after the Commonwealth Games Committee had blackened the country’s reputation and indulged in loot of astronomical proportions, there was need that those running sports bodies as personal fiefdoms must be made accountable to someone, if not the government, at least Parliament. But let that pass for the nonce.
The issue that cannot be evaded is that so many ministers, comprising a fair proportion of the Cabinet, have violated, glaringly, a fundamental principle of democracy requiring that those with a conflict of interest must not have a say in policy in any issue that is the cause of conflict.
Ironically, Dr Farooq Abdullah’s son and Kashmir chief minister, Omar Abdullah, has publicly stated that his father and other Union ministers with interests in sports organisations should have “recused” themselves from the Cabinet meeting. Why didn’t the Prime Minister insist on the wholesome rule about conflict of interest being obeyed? Was it because of Mr Pawar’s gruff threat about the very future of the UPA?
If so, something far more shattering and shameful followed. As the country has witnessed over the last two days, West Bengal chief minister and a key ally in the UPA, Mamata Banerjee, has gravely jeopardised the Prime Minister’s landmark visit to Bangladesh when all was set to bring about a paradigm change in the bilateral relationship. Her tantrum over the sharing of Teesta waters has driven a dismayed Dhaka to ask: “Will another great opportunity to usher in a new era be missed?” The precise answer to the question would be available only at the visit’s end, but the prospect seems very gloomy.