Back to the Parliament

The forthcoming winter session of Parliament has 20 working days, excluding the weekend holidays. Four out of these 20 days are Fridays whic...

The forthcoming winter session of Parliament has 20 working days, excluding the weekend holidays. Four out of these 20 days are Fridays which are reserved for private members’ bills. The inaugural day begins and ends with tributes to deceased leaders. That leaves precisely 15 days for conduct of the government’s business. The government is expecting to get several critical and long-due bills discussed and passed in the coming session, including bills on Disaster Management, Provident Fund Regulatory Authority, and a Commission for Child Rights. Some bills from the last session too are waiting to be passed.

And yet all this business could go for a toss if signs emanating from opposition camps are heeded. The NDA is planning to once again sabotage proceedings of Parliament, this time basing its attack on Volcker’s controversial report. Raising an issue in Parliament is one thing, stalling Parliament is another. Parliament is the perfect platform for the Opposition to criticise the government, ask prodding questions and seek explanations. But when you disrupt the Parliament and attack the government through TV cameras planted outside the Parliament, you are destroying the dignity of the institution.

The last session was also the only one in the history of the present government which the NDA did not completely sabotage. But political analysts are expecting the forthcoming session will go up in smoke, and that again it would be a case of smoke without fire. The emergence of media-savvy leaders has shifted the stage for political debate to television. Some boisterous NDA leaders led by George Fernandes have anyways carved out their political niches of continually attacking Sonia Gandhi for everything she does and doesn’t do. And they do so only on television since they just do not have an issue to raise against her in Parliament. Issues apart, even the Opposition has a duty towards the country’s electorate to allow for discussions, debates and passing of bills through a smooth session of Parliament. It is time the Opposition reflected upon its conduct and took the action back to where it belongs: the Parliament.

The Citizen President

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The late K R Narayanan was a path-breaking president in many ways. In his presidential nomination, the Congress finally fulfilled a long-held dream of Mahatma Gandhi to see a dalit as President of India. He called himself an active president and never minced words or hesitated to take action when he felt was required and in the right.

I had the opportunity to interview him for my TV show, which happened to be his first TV interview after becoming the president. The bureaucrats had recommended him not to give the interview but he overruled their recommendation, and in fact answered many political questions also. He was also the president to have returned files of controversial recommendations sent by the Cabinet to the then Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda. He was critical of and ultimately ruled out Veer Savarkar’s name for award of the Bharat Ratna. Post retirement, he never made any controversial statement, in order to maintain the dignity of the president’s office that he had held for five years. Even his tenure as vice-president and therefore the chairman of the Rajya Sabha, was remarkable for the fact that not a single finger was raised against him in any matter, controversial or not.

Few know that Narayanan started as a journalist in Delhi, but then went on to study at the London School of Economics on a JRD Tata scholarship. In fact, so impressed was his professor at LSE with his talent that he wrote to Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru asking him to induct Narayanan into foreign service, a request which Pandit Nehru promptly honoured.

Narayanan wanted to marry a foreigner while serving in foreign affairs, but was prevented by the protocol and guidelines from doing so. Ultimately, word reached Pandit Nehru and he gave permission to Narayanan to marry the girl of his choice, who later adopted the Indian name Usha. In his departure, the nation mourns the loss of not just a leader who redefined the workings of the Office of the President in India but also someone who demonstrated that caste and community are but minor impediments in the path to the pinnacle for the industrious and the worthy.

Fighting fit

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It is not easy filling the shoes of a leader as tall as the late Sunil Dutt and thus it is a pleasure to see the mettle his daughter Priya has shown. Barely three days after becoming a mother through a caesarean-section birth , she was out on the streets doing door-to-door campaigning in the suburbs of Bandra and Santa Cruz. The by-election in the 20-lakh votes Mumbai (North-West) constituency has been a low key affair so far, and not without reason. When Jitin Prasad and I campaigned among the north-Indians for her, it appeared that victory is a foregone conclusion and that she merely needs to enhance the margin.

I have seen Priya working with her father since her younger days and she clearly has the pulse of every voter in every lane and by-lane of Bandra and the nearby suburbs. Still, this is no reason for complacency to breed among Congress workers. Even her brother Sanjay cannot do anything till Sunday as he is abroad for a film shoot. Kumar Gaurav, Priya’s brother-in-law and Govinda are there convassing for her.

The writer is a Congress MP in the Rajya Sabha. Send him your feedback at shuklarajeevgmail.com