Those who think that the badlands of Bihar are a blot on the fair name of Indian democracy should hear the never-say-die Raghuvansh Pratap Singh on the subject. When a couple of BJP MPs heckled Singh on Bihar’s failure to hold panchayat elections for long, the RJD leader shot back: ‘‘Bihar had panchayati raj before you were born.’’ He went on to assert that Bihar was the true cradle of democracy — the Vaishali republic 3,000 years ago was the first democratic state in the world and ‘‘it is our ancestors who gave birth to the idea of democracy,’’ Singh said. His charge that Central funds are being denied to Bihar’s panchayats was however roundly refuted by Rural Development Minister Kashiram Rana who said the state had failed to utilise funds earmarked for schemes at the village level.Men too wise to learnMen may or may not be from Mars but they definitely have bigger egos that mar their art of learning — or so feisty Congress veteran Margaret Alva believes. After the reply on the discussion on panchayats, Alva wanted to know why no central help was being given to train elected women panches and sarpanches. A male member wondered aloud why only women needed training. Alva shot back: ‘‘Men need it too but they think they are so good they don’t need to learn anything.’’Water, water everywhereActress Shabana Azmi was like a hardcore environmentalist in the Rajya Sabha today. Mixing passion with facts, Shabana rued on the water situation in the country. India was slotted at 133 out of 188 nations in terms of per capita availability of water. It’s water ranked at 120 on the global scale in terms of purity. She rattled off relevant figures to make a point that the country needs a serious water management policy. She proposed realistic costs for water usage and asked government to do away with subsidies that have encouraged urbanites to waste the water. PM trips have ‘far-reaching’ effectThe Congress demanded that the Government should take Parliament and the country into confidence on issues of national security. Charging the Government with failing to defend country, party spokesman Satyavrat Chaturvedi said: ‘‘When as the Prime Minister he visited Lahore, Kargil conflict took place and when he visited China recently, the Chinese troops infiltrated into Arunachal Pradesh.’’He also recollected that the last time Vajpayee had gone to China, Vietnam was plunged into crisis. ‘‘If this was the impact of Vajpayee’s foreign visits, should he visit a foreign country at all?’’ he asked.What’s Bush got to do with it?Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Nirupam got up to ask a question during question hour in his inimitable style on Thursday. This time, the question was directed at Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee. Nirupam wanted to know from the Prime Minister whether his comments on Bush’s teetotaller status post-G 8 summit had anything to do with the thoughts of introducing a legislation banning liquor in India? In reply, the Prime Minister just smiled as the rest of the House burst into laughter.
