Sushma Swaraj made a wild and unsubstantiated allegation claiming that the Congress/United Progressive Alliance carried out the serial blasts to appease the Muslim community, which is supposedly miffed and uneasy about the nuclear deal and any association with the United States of America. This is not merely the voice of some parochial, partisan, fringe leader but also of a woman who was once the Central minister for information and broadcasting, a fact that makes the reality of what she shouted out loud and clear at a press conference downright frightening. That the main opposition party of the country could make this kind of public intervention into our political space only reaffirms the paucity of ideas and intellectual debate, opinions, solutions and arguments, all of which are essential if we are to inject a sense of security, pride and integrity into the body politic in a concerted effort to make our fledgling democracy work well and grow into a fine mechanism that allows plurality and diversity to remain our fundamental strengths.
Sadly, the one-point agenda and desperation of the National Democratic Alliance and the United National Progressive Alliance, as the two major blocs in the Opposition, to sit on the treasury benches in the Lok Sabha have compelled them to indulge in unacceptable rhetoric, abuse and false accusations against the ruling coalition. The strange ‘sting’ involving a television channel and a political party does not merit accolades because it was clumsy and amateurish without any legal back-up that could have made it stand the test of law. Once again, to have the Bharatiya Janata Party’s prime ministerial candidate hold a brief for the disgusting spectacle in parliament that the three MPs had orchestrated with the help of the party office and a news channel, was demeaning to him and to all Indians. Why did L.K. Advani have to stoop to that abysmal level? Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi have never descended to such dismal levels of public posturing.
Action above words
It is much too depressing and scary at the same time. India has consequently become vulnerable to all manner of internal contradictions that stem from the lack of honest enforcement of a code of conduct and the laws that govern this land. To add another law will not change the abject lack of enforcement or decrease the incidence of corruption. It is imperative to ensure that the existing laws are operating with integrity and not as tools of settling political and social vendettas. Only after this cleansing exercise is put in place and fair enforcement ensues, can an all-party congress adjust and rewrite the law book.
Political parties and their leadership need to be radically overhauled. The brigades that people the Lok Sabha and the many Vidhan Sabhas have to be educated about the tenets of liberty, democracy and the fraternity of this sub-continent. They have to internalize their own predilections, assess their ability to deliver the goods, correct their ways of dealing with the people and with each other, study, read, experience, debate and refrain from self-aggrandizement and material gain.
However, the real question is whether our elected representatives want to commit themselves to making India a world power? My sense is that they have no passion for anything except untoward wheeling and dealing for themselves and other short term monetary gains for their party infrastructures.
The sharp contrast between a Barack Hussein Obama as the US president-in-waiting and the prime-minister-in-waiting of the largest democracy on earth, Bharat, is near blinding. It is deeply disappointing to see the energy of the former juxtaposed against the age-old baggage, archaic rhetoric and stuck-in-a-time-warp-action of the latter.
