Keeping track of the savage cut-and-thrust in politics
Keki Daruwalla
Keeping in mind what India and the world are facing against coronavirus, it would be churlish to cavil about what’s happening in the country in other fields in March. One needs to respect the PM for handling the coronavirus crisis so far. One cannot envisage UPA-I or UPA-II doing this half as effectively. Even if the rumours about under-testing are true, no one has accused the government of any dereliction. We are doing the best we can. He could have given a day or so for the logistics — poor migrants have been trudging back home over miles. But he likes to break news dramatically at 8, with midnight as the closing hour. Remember, he kept the same time table for his notorious demonetising telecast.
Is this the right time to talk of our polity? Why not? While everyone is fully concerned with the mahamari, we needn’t ignore the savage cut-and-thrust in politics. Another state has fallen to floor-crossing by MLAs. So, over three years, we have seen states finally settling down with the governments the electorate had initially rejected. India’s main democratic credentials rest on fair elections. What happens if the decision gets overturned by some Deputy Speaker, who with the Governor’s overt backing unseats the Speaker from his gaddi and in due course a government falls, as it did in Arunachal? Or a prince crosses over with 22 MLAs to the BJP and is given post haste a seat in the Rajya Sabha? Foreigners must be laughing at us while paying lip service to ‘Indian democracy’ even as they hide their grins, as they did in the comical Vedic Science conclaves held by the BJP.
The Arunachal case was especially startling. In the elections held on April 9, 2014 along with the parliamentary polls, the Congress won 42 seats in a House of 60, while the BJP won 11. Nabam Tuki was declared Chief Minister. How was this thumping victory overturned? It is a long story and details can be found in books. A Deputy Speaker was got hold of and the Governor, JP Rajkhowa, ordered the convening of the state Assembly. When the MLAs reached the place, they found the Assembly doors locked! How come? Hell’s bells, had the doorman lost the key or what? The Assembly was meeting in a hotel. (Why not a casino?). And at the hotel, the Speaker was replaced by the Deputy Speaker. Later, the Chief Minister and the government were thrown out and a new dawn lighted up the skies of Arunachal Pradesh.
This is not the only state, the kind where Thomas Carlyle would have mentioned “topsy-turvydom”, a term he applied for the state of things in France in his book The French Revolution. Take Uttarakhand, again a long story which needs to be cut short. We keep priding ourselves as ‘the largest democracy in the world’. What is so large about our democracy, the electorate? And what is so genuine about our democracy? Elections again? Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna’s performance during the floods was not deemed satisfactory and he was changed. He first sulked, and then crossed over to the BJP with eight other MLAs. The moral of the story for the Congress is: look after your sulking legislators. But the Congress is looking after nobody, not even themselves! Jyotiraditya Scindia, who recently crossed over to the BJP, had no reason to sulk.
Incidentally, as an aside, a Scindia should shy away from unnecessary controversy because the Indian public is unforgiving, so is public memory, and each time the Scindia name crops up, the notorious defeat of Jayajirao Scindia against Rani Laxmibai and Tatya Tope, when the Gwalior raja ran from the field till he reached Agra, would come up. Much of his army deserted him; they did not want to side with the British. There are also not very complimentary things about the Gwalior scions being said in regard to the Third Battle of Panipat.
But enough of floor crossing. What about the other great pillar of democracy, the judiciary? We just had a Justice of the Supreme Court call the Prime Minister a ‘versatile genius’, not the kind of language His Lordships of the highest court normally use. And then, of course, the former Chief Justice, Ranjan Gogoi, accepted a Rajya Sabha seat. When former Chief Justice Mohammad Hidayatullah agreed to become Vice President, I was Special Assistant to the Prime Minister and managed the formalities — how he has to be proposed, seconded. But he was becoming Vice President, not a member of the Rajya Sabha, and he was unopposed.
What about the political parties? This is the time for Opposition parties to do something for the stranded poor. But the BJP, backed by RSS cadres, will easily beat them to it. And shouldn’t the BJP bend a little on CAA and other astringent legislation?
