Parliamentary Democracy – an Augean Mess

In the course of the fierce debate that the Indian Parliament saw recently, which some MPs even called historic, the polemical issue could not be settled conclusively. That the issue as to whether Parliament is supreme over the people or vice versa had the political class scurrying for an answer to take on the civil society. The question that gets asked is can Parliament ride rough shod over the citizens’ demand to rid India of the rampant corruption that is tearing into the very fabric of the Indian Statecraft? Does the Preamble to the Constitution that proclaims “WE THE PEOPLE solemnly resolve to give ourselves this constitution” sound resonant to our politicians to admit that we the People are supreme and Parliament is subservient as a catalyst in transforming people’s aspirations into the realities?

If the Constitution is sacrosanct then Parliament is the sanctum sanctorum and it must not be desecrated.  But what do the people find to their utter dismay and horror? Parliament as the temple of democracy is reduced to a theatre of the Absurd! Strangely enough a non-elected CM of a state once had cast vote in Parliament to reduce Parliamentary democracy to mockery and to subvert the spirit of the Constitution. Again the people have witnessed the high drama of Machiavellian ploys and money launderings to save Governments which were reduced to minority. Citizens were shell-shocked by the brazen display of political prostitution!

Not long ago the Indian Marxists had a squinted vision of Indian Parliament as a bourgeois institution and a fraud on the poor masses. Again rightly or wrongly, the extreme iconoclastic Left went a step further in their choicest epithet they preserved for the Indian Parliament.   

What the people have seen over the years is a most unfortunate downward journey of India’s Parliament. It is the unquenchable thirst of the greedy politicians who have sullied this institution to an extent that an ordinary citizen has lost faith in it. In fact he has lost faith in the Constitution per se that has pledged unto him a paradigm of Ram Rajya (a welfare State with a guarantee of livelihood, a right to life, a right to employment and a right to property etc. etc.); but in reality the common man faces excruciating sufferings, abject poverty, threats of starvation and extinction because of corruption and deception that has been unleashed in the so-called parliamentary democracy. 

Sadly, Parliamentary democracy in India has not stood the test of time. Constitution - its spirit and articles of faith – has been trampled and subverted. The Directive Principles of Sate Policy is a hoax. The Prime minister is not an elected entity directly by the people and not accountable to the elected house of Parliament. Dynastic autocracy and dictatorship of the fractured mandates coming together to rule the roost in power, which could not be perceived by the framers of the Constitution, has become the hallmark of India’s Parliamentary democracy. The basic structures or principles of democracy – the checks and balances of power – have been repeatedly demolished and given the lie to. Parliamentary privilege is more important than the voice of the people. Parliamentary democracy in the womb of a Socialist Secular Democratic Republic is just a chimera.  

Mother of Scams

The Govt is rocking on the 2G scam. Prime Minister is trying hard to insulate his exalted office from the tremors. According to  a PMO Note  the PM has asked to be kept at "arm's length" from the decision making over 2G spectrum allocations. It is amazing that the PM wished to be kept aloof from such a vital matter of state business affecting the huge revenue or having caused huge revenue loss to the Exchequer.Is our PM in an advisory role in the transaction of the Govt business? Of course the Constitution mandates the PM (art.74) to aid and advise the President. Does it mean that Prime Minister will only play an advisory role for the Govt so that he has an equation with the President? Indian President neither governs nor rules. Does our PM also want this constitutional status for him? So he is above all scams engineered in various ministries including his own (S-Band Scam).