Handful of MPs hold Lok Sabha to ransom
by T.V.R. Shenoy
INDIANS boast of being citizens of the world’s largest democracy. “ We may be poor, our schools and hospitals may be in disarray,” the argument runs, “but we are a free country where our legislators meet and debate freely.”

The man who is USA’s enemy No 1
by Harihar Swarup
EIGHT years back Rajiv Gandhi was about to enter Iraq on his peace mission. The gulf war was raging and Baghdad was under heavy missile attack by the USA and its allies. Rajiv’s mission took him to Moscow and then to Teheran from where he was to drive down to Baghdad.

Can we rectify Mathes on our own?
by Himmat Singh Gill
AS we enter the last year of this century, the question I often ask myself is: Is it time to celebrate or to despair? An inner voice tells me that it is time for neither, for in India the land of the complacent and the shifty, such comparisons and evaluations are totally unnecessary and a complete waste of time.

75 Years Ago

Jumna and Ganges
HEAVY rain has fallen and both the rivers are swollen. Upcountry unseasonal rain has washed a number of animals and dead fish. Reports have been received of rain and flooding of Hamirpur by the Betwa and the Jumna; several villages having been inundated, but no loss of life has occurred so far.

Handful of MPs hold Lok Sabha to ransom

by T.V.R. Shenoy

INDIANS boast of being citizens of the world’s largest democracy. “ We may be poor, our schools and hospitals may be in disarray,” the argument runs, “but we are a free country where our legislators meet and debate freely.” Well, I have news for all those proud Indians: parliamentary democracy in India is in the intensive care unit and I can’t find a single doctor hopeful about its recovery.

Did you see the US House of Representatives debate the impeachment of President Clinton? Thanks to the difference in time, I saw our representatives — some of them anyway — misbehave in the most loutish manner imaginable in the afternoon and early evening. And then later in the day I saw the US legislators. I know American magazines have been cribbing about the lack of civility and so on in Capitol Hill. Frankly, I don’t have the faintest idea what they are complaining about.

The impeachment of a President is the equivalent of a no-confidence motion, and the winter session of Parliament was supposed to do nothing half as divisive. The decision to create new states — Vananchal, Uttaranchal, and Chattisgarh — and Bills on economic policy were supposedly supported by both the BJP and the Congress. Together, these two account for over 210 members in a House of 543. So you would have expected at least the Patents Bill and the Insurance Bill to pass.

Instead, it was an exhausting struggle for the government even to table these important pieces of legislation in Parliament thanks to 21 hours of what is euphemistically described as “interruptions”. Frankly, the only saving grace was that there was no actual wresting. There was, in short, scarcely one day when Indians did not need to feel ashamed of their elected representatives.

And in the United States? The Chair was obeyed without question. When someone was given the floor other members listened attentively without trying to draw him out. Speakers rose only when recognised by the Chair or to make a point of order. When a reference had to be made to someone from another party, it was never by name but as “the gentleman from..”. And they did behave like gentlemen (and ladies).

A visiting Indian might have thought the House of Representatives was discussing a motion that was broadly supported. You certainly wouldn’t have thought that it was debating something that would eventually be passed by a slim majority of nine votes.

Compare that with India. The Congress and the BJP agreed on the Women’s Reservation Bill, on the creation of the new States, and on the need to carry forward economic reform. Yet party leaders from both sides failed to control their extremists and this encouraged the smaller, more irresponsible, parties to create havoc.

Only the Samajwadi Party and the Rashtriya Janata Dal MPs oppose the Women’s Reservation Bill. About 37 in all. Yet they stalled the will of the 506 other elected representatives. In other words, the minority succeeded in cowing down the majority. And that is fascism, not democracy.

There is no point saying, as some Congressmen are, that the BJP’s floor managers should have forged consensus before the controversial Bills were tabled. Discussion and debate are supposed to be what Parliament is for; if everything is to take place behind closed doors, what is the use of the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha?

Long before the word ‘Parliament’ was coined, before the English language itself was born, there was a Sanskrit word ‘‘asabhya’’, generally translated as ‘‘rude’’. But its literal meaning is ‘that which is unworthy of being said or done in a sabha’ (as in Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha).

You may or may not approve of the decisions taken by the US House of Representatives. But every Indian must admit that a 222-year-old nation’s legislators proved far more sabhya than those from a nation boasting a legacy of five millennia.

A happy New Year? Well, I hope so!

The man who is USA’s enemy No 1

by Harihar Swarup

EIGHT years back Rajiv Gandhi was about to enter Iraq on his peace mission. The gulf war was raging and Baghdad was under heavy missile attack by the USA and its allies. Rajiv’s mission took him to Moscow and then to Teheran from where he was to drive down to Baghdad. Gorbachev and the Iranian leaders had extended support to Rajiv’s peace initiative and he was to convey certain proposals to President Saddam Hussein which might have helped him in bringing about a ceasefire.

Unlike last week’s attack on Iraq, Saddam was himself the target of America’s menacing missiles in 1991 and he was running for his life, changing shelter every night. This correspondent, accompanying Rajiv, was witness to the tension-charged moments as a frantic message came from Saddam. “Please do not undertake the road journey. We cannot ensure your security..... .nobody is secure here”. Happily the Gulf war ended as India’s former Prime Minister was flying home.

Like the 1991 attack, there was no threat to Saddam’s life in the recent four-day bombing. On the contrary, he has emerged stronger, remains unbowed, unrepentant and untamed. The goal of bringing Iraqi leader’s downfall proved abortive and internally, in spite of his unpopularity as a cold-blooded killer, he has gained unquestioned supremacy. It is also not clear how the bombing will discourage Saddam from making weapons of mass destruction even though the Americans and British reportedly destroyed most of the factories identified by United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM).

Saddam has now been visiting the damaged sites and making public appearance but his programme and schedule have been kept a closely guarded secret, the trauma of the bombing this time was not so terrible as eight years ago. Reports in the western press say that in Baghdad’s busy markets there was no shortage of basic food — rice, bread and vegetable.

Saddam is a many-faceted personality. Americans describe him as megalomaniac, cold-blooded killer and fascist while his countrymen see him as a champion of the Arab cause and a hero. He is seen as a victim in the East and a villain in the West.

The 61-year-old Iraqi leader has been a gunman and a bitter fighter. Born in Tikrit in 1937, he was involved in politics from his earliest days. Enrolling himself as a cadre of the Baath Party and belonging to a clan with growing power in the army he was involved in an assassination attempt against Gen Abdul Karim Kaseem, who had overthrown the monarchy in 1958. He has the reputation of a sharp shooter and used his gun in the assassination attempt.

Saddam is thoroughly homebred and never lived abroad except for a grief period in Egypt during which the Baath Party participated in a military coup in Baghdad. He returned to Iraq but was imprisoned following overthrowing of his party 1964. He often recalls his days in prison. His wife, Sajida, President Saddam might have told his followers umpteen times, used to bring him messages concealed in the nappies of their infant son, Uday.

In 1968 a revamped party returned to power. Saddam was barely 30 but his credentials as a leader were established. He was since then known to be cruel and violent in his action. He became strong enough by 1979 to overthrow President Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr and seized power. By that time Iraq had turned an oil-rich country and a militarily powerful nation. It is said that till Saddam usurped power, his second home was the bunker.

When Saddam launched an eight-year-long war with Iran in 1980, Iraq was a middle ranking oil, power, having savagely divisive internal politics. He was not regarded the front ranking leader of the Arab world. The long-drawn war gave him the opportunity to emerge as a key player in West Asia and Iraq became a force to reckon with. He became the bastion against the Iranian revolution and elicited support from the West.

Saddam Hussein won the war against Iran. Ayatollah Khomeini, the leader of the Iranian revolution, was forced to say he would “drain the bitter cup” and sue for peace in 1988. The invasion of Kuwait by Saddam’s forces escalated into a full-fledged war in 1991 and since then he remains enemy number one of the USA and the Pentagon’s punching bag.

Can we rectify Mathes on our own?
by Himmat Singh Gill

AS we enter the last year of this century, the question I often ask myself is: Is it time to celebrate or to despair? An inner voice tells me that it is time for neither, for in India the land of the complacent and the shifty, such comparisons and evaluations are totally unnecessary and a complete waste of time.

India, the voice tells me, will continue to bumble along with its slow and tardy pace, basking in its self-anointed cloak of moral ascendancy, supposedly derived out of its deep roots and ancient civilisation, and continue to perform the unbelievable — all together in one stroke.

So like cavemen, while we defecate openly squatting on the railway tracks every morning, we conjure up five nuclear explosions in the course of just two days. While the poor and the famished die in our villages, their stomachs devoid of food, we splurge in our tinsel towns, in our beauty shows and fashion parades, mango eating contests and top and bottom heavy society women and men presiding over dainty little seminars on “food for the poor and the undernourished”. Doing all this without batting an eyelid.

A place of pride for our women, now all set for one-third representation in Parliament, in spite of having already benefited with equal voting rights at the start of Independence, is counter-balanced with child infanticide bride burning, and “sati” in some cases. The harangue by Mrs Mohini Giri, and others in her following has nothing to do with the poor and uneducated women in our villages and their backyards, and everything to do with bettering the empires of the city dwelling suave and over-intelligent women leaders of our times. Reservation within reservation as advocated by Laloo Yadav and others, has only unleashed a bitter war between the female armies of the country. It has the astute politician now very eagerly tallying up his own vote-bank for the next general election, as and when they are thrust on a fed-up and disinterested nation.

The country has become modern, and yet it has became totally primitive. Women’s liberation and the march for equitable economic parity has left shattered homes and bitterly wounded joint family systems. No one listens to anyone anymore. The “enlightened” ones march out of house gates while the poor and the helpless, take to the kerosene stove in the kitchen. Equality and liberty, the hallmarks of modernism, have taken a heavy toll. Poor women don’t realise that the politician and the smart city lasses, are all exploiting them for their own gains!

Everyone has become very aware of everything but their own obligations. The poor must get “bijli” from “kundis” (without payment, of course), everyone must at least have a half-kanal house without, of course, having earned it, dozens of kids each household produces must only go to “public schools” where everyone calls everyone “ankle (uncle) and ainty. And yes, of course no one should have to work for all this. Great has been the “freedom of expectation” bestowed upon the unthinking, by their leaders.

The politicians, and IAS bureaucrats are the new kingmakers, with the police coming in a close third. Principles and uprighteousness be damned. Now is the time to join the bandwagon of the “netas” and the “netans” and join the patron’s club. Efficiency and excellence has given way to mediocrity in most government-run concerns and organisations, and the corrupt don’t even look sideways when accepting a favour or a bribe.

On the cultural scene, showbiz and image-making has taken a vicious stranglehold, with pseudo-juries and trusts deciding the fate of writers, poets and artists. Most critics, reviewers and journalists, who are supposed to call a spade a spade, know little or care little, about doing their job honestly and efficiently. There is an inbuilt system of the distribution of the spoils of war. You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. The real writers and artists have long withered away in the cold of the lack of recognition, and the unavailability of a platform and stage, where they could display their mental wares.

Two areas, which needed our immediate attention after 1947, have been long ignored. Education and family planning or, shall we say, birth control. Without education, free all the way up to the primary stage, the poor will continue to produce kids. For it pays to do so, during the elections and in the factories and the fields. Sanjay Gandhi’s family control exercise died an untimely death, but it is time to provide incentives or the rap now, to arrest the galloping population graph before it gets the better of us. Pampering the masses is one thing, and getting the country to achieve some tangible targets, quite another.

As we celebrate freedom that to my mind, we got too easily the contribution of Congress freedom fighters and all that notwithstanding, let us resolve, each in our own way, to rectify matters in our own immediate surroundings and backyards, without looking to the government or other agencies for assistance.

We, the middle classes can do it, provided that we ourselves do not try and get rich too soon! That is when the upslide has often turned into a rapid downslide in the case of many of our worthies in very high places.

Long live India in all its diversity in caste, creed, corruption and confusion. At least, if it cannot live, it cannot die.

(The writer is a retired Major-General)

75 YEARS AGO

Jumna and Ganges

HEAVY rain has fallen and both the rivers are swollen. Upcountry unseasonal rain has washed a number of animals and dead fish.

Reports have been received of rain and flooding of Hamirpur by the Betwa and the Jumna; several villages having been inundated, but no loss of life has occurred so far.

The Collector has organised relief measures. The town is slushy and unclean. Reports of the swelling of the Jumna and the Ganges have also been received from the districts in Cawnpore and Benaras.