Opposition must be serious about its role

The non-ruling parties and members ought to respect the platform the parliamentary floor offers to discuss Bills and legislate responsibly

The Opposition needs the legislature much more than the Government. Ministers can pass Bills in a few minutes at a time, especially if the Opposition does not pay attention to legislation and remains distracted by agitation. Rushing into the well need not necessarily provoke adjournments. A few agitating members can, upon the Speaker’s orders, be taken away by the marshals. This used to be done in the earlier years of Independence. Recalcitrant members were carried out physically.

Some Opposition parties and members just do not appreciate the gift the parliamentary floor is. The opportunity it gives to MPs to express themselves and their policy views is phenomenal. One reason could be that Opposition leaders do not study enough and do not therefore have anything substantial to say. The 2019 general election was fought by the leading Opposition on the slogan ‘Chowkidar chor hai’, implying that the Government had pocketed money from payments made to France for Rafale warplanes.

However, the Supreme Court declared the deal as clean. The Opposition allegation was based on the habit of politicians lining their pockets whenever a sizeable deal happened. After the 2019 election results, one survey agency said the party bandying the chor slogan lost quite a few votes for repeating this slur ad nauseum. The ruling party could have easily countered this with ‘Gali gali mein shor hai ke Rajiv Gandhi chor hai’.

The Opposition parties should have a think tank-like secretariat for national policies, which can help its leaders to introduce Bills based on the think tank’s findings. Parties on the Opposition benches should have shadow ministers, starting with a shadow PM (leader of Opposition), a finance minister, defence minister and so on. Informed and intelligent debates would then be possible. Parties then would be equipped with knowledge, and ready on policies instead of shouting only allegations and frequently walking out. Currently, the impression is that they pocket hefty emoluments but do little work.

Once the late Union Minister Anil Madhav Dave had lunch at my home. The BJP was in Opposition then and did walk out occasionally. My emphatic suggestion was his (and also my) party’s method should be no or rare walkouts. Whenever the BJP had a grouse against the Government, its members should wear black armbands. Other methods of protest can be wearing half-black attire or members sitting in the aisles.

Right from the beginning, there has been no tradition of parliamentary party offices doing ideological or academic work. The Communist parties did something, but one doesn’t know if they did any fresh thinking or merely repeated what Marx and Lenin said or wrote. Else, why were these parties clueless after the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991? Nowhere in the world have the Communists found any alternative.

In Britain, not only do the Conservative and Labour Parties (perhaps also the Liberals) have shadow ministers but also constituencies allocated to their members, who are supposed to be in touch with their constituency and are expected to hold small meetings so that the party knows what is going on in each constituency. The particular member works as though he would stand from the constituency in the next election. This may not be possible for a party like the Congress as early allocation of a seat could result in fights among aspirants. The Congress therefore does last-minute allocations to avoid trouble.

The quality of political candidates in the West is overall superior to those at the bottom of the rung in India. Education used to be a problem earlier. There is hardly any on-the-work training on the Constitution or parliamentary articulation.

A quick tour of books by every new MP would be useful. There would be some well-travelled, knowledgeable MPs who would know quite a bit of the country. But most aren’t aware of every nook and corner of India. Yet they are elected to debate and legislate for the country. A brief history of post-Independence India and a quick look at the armed forces during the five wars we have fought must be provided in the two weeks during the first gap between two House sessions, so that MPs are well-equipped to debate national issues. Minus this, the members either remain silent or talk nonsense.

In my years, I came across some MPs who for two consecutive sessions (10 years) did not speak at all. They were from Gujarat, knew their State, but not enough about other places. Two members I knew had asked for starred questions; they were excited about their chance to speak and rehearsed for several evenings. Their problem was language. They could hold huge crowds in Gujarati. They knew adequate Hindi to converse but not enough to make speeches in Parliament. There must have been many such sad specimens from other States who kept silent, talked nonsense or simply shouted down members on the opposite side of the House. Or when they got bored, they played a role in the adjournment of the House. There are other members who do not have a language problem but suffer from knowledge-cum-information deficiency. Then there are others who talk loosely before the media. The anti-Government media — whether Indian, American or European — laps this up to malign India in front of the world.

(The writer is a well-known columnist, an author and a former member of the Rajya Sabha. The views expressed are personal.)

Source: The Pioneer