Word for word

The country has been told over the last two weeks that its parliamentary representatives have a price. On Monday, it discovered again what its Parliament was worth. Within a few hours of the first day of the trust vote debate, cynics lost their no-trust vote against the country’s politics. It was clear that every lament about shopping for MPs should be qualified with the acknowledgment that, when the occasion demands, our MPs can give the country’s highest forum the quality of debate it deserves. Yes there were adjournments. But, no, they weren’t the kind of disruptive mania that parliamentary adjournments have come to stand for. Clearly, MPs, even SP and BSP MPs who carry the edginess of their parties’ tough political battle into the House, were responding to the responsibility demanded of them. A responsibility engendered by the political class, even as it was busy in the tactical business of securing support, recognising what this trust vote debate is about — a big, complex country in the middle of huge changes trying to define its engagement with the world and therefore define a part of itself.

When L.K. Advani said the nuclear deal denies the possibility of Pokharan-III and that the issue of parliamentary scrutiny of foreign policy deserves a fresh look, when Pranab Mukherjee referred to recent history to take on Advani’s thesis and critiqued what he said was a peculiarly blinkered view of national interest, when Mohammed Salim referred to the common minimum programme and argued that it was the Congress and not the Left who broke a compact, the country was given snapshots of major political formations’ thinking on a complex and crucial issue. Hosting debates of such depth, apart from passing laws, is really what Parliament is about. And who says Parliament cannot be seriously entertaining when it is serious? For proof, one only has to listen to the BSP’s Brajesh Pathak’s exhilaratingly energetic intervention, invoking Saddam Hussein and American “imperialism”. As Devendra Yadav of the RJD said, this debate comes in the wake of several more debates in and outside Parliament on the nuclear deal and the larger foreign policy question and, therefore, in both symbol and substance it is a fine advertisement for Indian democracy.

Whichever way the trust vote goes today, there will be political drama and policy consequences. But as we witness, absorb and interpret all that post-vote activity, we shouldn’t forget the reaffirmation the pre-vote debate gave us: practitioners of this rambunctious, no-prisoners-taken competitive and often chaotic democracy have within themselves the ability to close ranks around a great moment.