The Hindu : A ritual robbed of solemnity

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Feb 19, 2003

Opinion

Opinion - News Analysis

A ritual robbed of solemnity

By Inder Malhotra

The President's address to a joint sitting of the two Houses of Parliament every February is republican India's adaptation of the "Speech from the Throne" at Westminster. Sadly, as with several other practices and precedents of the colonial past retained after Independence, the annual opening of Parliament has also been reduced to a flawed ritual. To make matters worse, it is all too often robbed of its solemnity, even dignity.

On the latest occasion, the first when A.P.J. Abdul Kalam took the podium in Parliament's Central Hall, things were mercifully not so bad as they have sometimes been in the past but they were bad enough. The reference here is not to the easily avoidable strain put on the octogenarian Vice-President, Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, about which more will be said presently. One must first bemoan something that has gone practically unnoticed presumably because it is now considered routine.

No sooner had Dr. Kalam started speaking than a burly and bellowing member rose in his seat and started screaming, "Rashtrapatiji, something terrible is happening in my State that is also the largest in the country. It needs to be corrected first." He remained on his feet for quite a while though it was difficult to follow what he was saying. Towards the end of the President's marathon speech, there was again some noise but this perhaps was due to crosstalk on various benches, including those occupied by very senior Ministers.

In no legislature in any democratic country worth the description is the head of state, whether a hereditary monarch or an elected president, treated with such lack of courtesy ever. On the contrary, the normal pattern was best reflected by the heart-warming manner in which the United States Congress treated the then U.S. President, Bill Clinton, at a time when it was trying to impeach him. On the evening when Mr. Clinton arrived at the Capitol Hill to deliver his state of the union address, he was greeted with impeccable courtesy and respect and applauded repeatedly. The next morning, the Senators had no hesitation in taking the floor to demand that he should either resign voluntarily or be forced out of the White House. There was another remarkable feature of the debate on the impeachment motionthat eventually failed Each speaker was given exactly three minutes to have his or her say. There was not a single case of the exceptionally rigorous time limit being breached.

This kind of exemplary discipline is totally alien to many MPs in the world's largest democracy. More often than not, they wallow in disrupting the proceedings and consider rushing to the well of the House the acme of parliamentary manners. Strangely, there are some that justify this appalling situation. One of their arguments is that the nation's parliament must reflect whatever happens outside in the country at large. A more absurd proposition is hard to imagine. Should members of Parliament be setters of good examples and role models for the people or should they behave in the august premises as rumbustious mobs do in the streets?

Some seasoned parliamentarians hold the media partly responsible for the sorry state of affairs. They say that the time when newspapers gave adequate and fair coverage to parliamentary proceedings, especially to the speeches of those who did their homework before taking the floor, were over long ago. Today newspapers splash on their front pages and TV channels beam at prime time the activities of only those who happily "hold Parliament to ransom."

There is a point to this but even this does not explain, leave excuse, disrespect shown to the head of state. To be sure, there was no problem on this score during the first 15 years or so since Independence. The rot set in only towards the end of the Sixties and has worsened over the subsequent decades. Because it was not nipped in the bud, the tolerance for it has risen to a dangerous level.

This apart, Monday's events also underscored the perils of making the President's speech unconscionably long and unbearably boring. Let me hasten to add that the President does not write his address to Parliament. It is a statement of the government policy and is therefore drafted by some faceless bureaucrats and approved by the Cabinet. It appears that this time round all ministries were asked to brag about their achievements real or imaginary. Everything that they sent was apparently included in the address. Consequently, what should have been a crisp and interesting statement of national policy and the government's legislative agenda turned into a huge collection of Press Information Bureau handouts, giving dull details and myriad of meaningless minutiae.

In heaven's name, what place do the bifurcation of the UTI, "corporatisation" of the SEBI, reorganisation of the UCG, the Kelkar committee's recommendations, the latest allocations for sanitation and so on have in the President's address, especially because all these dreary subjects have already been discussed threadbare?

It took the President a full 75 minutes to read out this tremendous trivia.

The luckless Vice-President had give up before completing the even longer Hindi version.

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