Today it is indeed an important day for Republic of India. Why? Well, the world’s largest democracy is celebrating the 60 years anniversary of first sitting of it’s institution of parliament. It is certainly a landmark moment after it got repeatedly tested and has been put under severe experiments for decades. On 13-May-1952, it took a remarkable democratic experiment of representing it’s people and continues today with 1/6th of human beings and no other state ever took this level of dramatic exercise in the history of the world.
As you might know, the Republic is governed in terms of the Constitution of India which was adopted by the Constituent Assembly on 26-November-1949 and came into force on 26-January-1950. After all these events and followed by first ever general elections, the elected members took oath and attended the India’s first sitting of parliament. I’ve been watching the speeches made on this august occasion by various members of Lok Sabha (House of the People) and Rajya Sabha (Council of States), they recalled the unforgettable moments of 60 years functioning of parliament.
Later in the evening, I was watching the special joint session of the parliamentary proceedings at the central hall, live on television, there were few questions repeatedly hitting on my mind; Who is increasingly becoming ignorant of each other? Is it ‘we the people’ or ‘parliament’ that we elected? Is there a gap widening? or Is it just a mere carelessness? Then I’ve decided to put something on this topic in my blog; Please be advised that this is my first ever/maiden blog post, you can expect a bunch of mistakes but I’m looking forward to your valuable suggestions and comments!
Firstly, I was trying to recall few things; a number of my friends openly said “why someone should care about the laws when he/she hasn’t done anything harm to others?”, they treat laws will be enforced only where there is a crisis or wrong doings by others and they simply forget they are being enforced in hell lot of other activities which we are part of every day. Also I overheard few bunch of other folks saying this “we don’t care what our law makers are doing in law making forums, all we want is comfortable life experience and you know what, we are paying our taxes properly. One might have similar stories or the same may be his/her own opinion as well! I’m trying to take this further and read through them. If you have ever read the constitution of India, you may recall from it’s preamble;
WE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a SOVEREIGN SOCIALIST SECULAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC and to secure to all its citizens:
JUSTICE, social, economic and political;
LIBERTY of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship;
EQUALITY of status and of opportunity;
and to promote among them all
FRATERNITY assuring the dignity of the individual and the unity and integrity of the Nation;
Before one could squarely blame the entire institution of parliament, he or she must understand that only in parliament you can enact laws or it is the only place where you amend the constitution of India when required. So, it is imminent that to every citizen of this nation, by knowingly or unknowingly, each one considered as adapted to this enactment and needs to respect your constitution first since you’re the principle stake holder; whether you like it or not, jokes and dislikes apart!
That being said, in the Indian constitutional scheme (in contrast to the British), Parliament is not supreme; it is the Constitution that is supreme. So, it doesn’t makes much sense if one is blaming the institution for the problems or crisis that we are passing through, in every walk of the life. Rather, sit back and see what we (read: we the people of India) are doing on our part to fix the issues, right from schooling to day-to-day work, we look for the best and nothing wrong in it, many if not most, without any hesitation – try to get that ‘best’ by paying graft or gifts.
Yes, we as people or society should look ourselves first and think before vote – we still mesmerized either in national or regional politics and not at all ready to accept an alternative or young candidate or innocent educated person. We live in hibernation mode for five years and slam every other person, be it lawmaker or government official or peers at work and go behind the set of frogs from the same pond. We often call people politicians are ill-iterate and they don’t care about anything in key sectors like economics, education etc. It may be partially true but trust me, there are hell lot of activities going in the parliamentary standing committees, some of the extra-ordinary reports, work being done. The fact of the matter is neither fourth pillar of democracy, often called as media nor the so called public relation wing of the political parties interested to showcase the good work by their colleagues.
Today, one of the senior parliamentarian rightly put it across when he was speaking on the floor of the house, people should given opportunity to understand more about parliamentary processes and how the actions at both houses impacting directly or indirectly their day-to-day lives; he went on and said, “current curriculum at school level focusing parliamentary process/activities only 5 – 10 marks level which is not sufficient at all and unless if one pick political science or civics as main course, he or she may not able to understand what’s actually happening in law making forums like parliament”. Governments must echo this when they work on framing syllabus and meanwhile, ‘we the people’ as stake holders needs to work at family or local communities level to ensure that the understanding on effectiveness of our vote, make sure our kids know little bit about parliament, elections etc.
We have right to vote and elect our representatives to represent us in the law-making or decision-making forums like parliament, assembly, corporation, panchayat level et al., One can classify the voting community into three major parts; They are, vote for parties by being loyal party-men, volunteers; people who think sincerely and go for a decisive option (includes invoking 49-O); finally just vote for some influenced factor (it ranges from instant money to subsidies or to other populists “free” schemes). Now there is another section of the society (I exclude the exceptions and immigrant workers here), most of it may be covered by so called educated-elites class, who are just trying to slam everyone when they face issues in the every walk of their life but not at all interested to vote. I also think that election commissions both at federal and states-level needs to run more campaigns especially targeting the so called educated and elite communities and make sure they understand the importance of casting their vote and it’s influence in selecting right representatives from several candidates. Otherwise, you may start seeing foul-crying from many sections of people immediately after elections being held and new government sworn in, any tax measure or curb on subsidy treated as anti-people activity by the new government. We never had a chance to look our fiscal situation and other reciprocation’s of the current fiscal deficit, inflation, nation’s external debt burden etc in the future; Opposition parties looks this as a fantastic chance to score more brownie political points.
I guess we forget this most of the time that the politics of today and tomorrow’s is determined by the sovereign of the nation (ie) we the people. I think we have equal right or should accept the blame equally by not sending the right candidates. Also there will be a institutional measures needs to put in place to curb the divergence with appropriate convergence factors; In the recent past, the states are getting empowered more and more, the golden days of federal authority is getting thinner. Yes, regional politics taking more assertion in deciding the initiatives by federal authorities but at the same time, they must share the goodness and badness of the outcome too. Blame game is not at all required here! Off-late, there have been calls for electoral and political reforms here and there but in this session atleast few parliamentarians called for swift action in this space; Almost everyone know what’s going on the ground when the election dates got announced and nexus between politicians and corporates. State-funding for elections becomes increasingly imminent as the time goes and you may hear the voice getting more louder and louder in the days ahead.
Dr Ambedkar says: “Democracy is not a form of government, but a form of social organization.” He also believed that political democracy cannot succeed without social and economic democracy. In his talk given on the Voice of America he argued that: “Democracy could not be equated with either republic or parliamentary form of government. The roots of democracy lay not in the form of government, parliamentary or otherwise. A democracy is a model of associated living. The roots of democracy are to be searched in social relationship, in terms of the associated life between the people who form the society.”
So ‘we the people’ must remember it’s their equal responsibility to build an inclusive society along with parliament and stop looking at the law-making forums as some alien space or place belongs only to elites and politicians. On the other hand, one might have seen some shameful acts done by our parliamentarians at both inside and outside of the houses which includes ruckus, shouting, physical and verbal attacks, tearing bills, harsh words about other religious faiths etc. One can’t decide these events as the entire institution’s outcome but may need to spend more time to understand the exact happenings inside and dive into it for deeper look.
Finally, the need of the hour is to put an institutional mechanism or strengthen the existing procedures to make sure parliament run smoothly without any disruption, works atleast 120 days every year and interact with common people (often called aam-aadmi) more frequently. Make sure parliament communicates effectively about the closed-door happenings of parliament in a fair and openness way back to the major stake holders of constitution and meanwhile, the sovereign of the nation (we the people) should give some attention to the happenings of parliament and not merely thinking everything was over after pressing our voting button. Let both the people and parliament work together as one single unit for the ‘Union of India’ with the same spirit.