If you live in India, you could not have missed all the din about the Jan Lok Pal and Anna Hazaare's fast. Now, while there is overwhelming public support for Anna Hazaare and his team - the so called 'Civil Society', you will not find it hard to locate voices of dissent among the intelligentia who decry Anna Hazaare's tactics as blackmail and undermining of Parliamentary democracy. We cannot undermine the power vested in our elected representatives (despite the fact that we are governed by a Prime Minister who is not, and a Cabinet, most of which are not, elected by the people.)
At the very least, they implore, refer the draft to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Lok Pal, a select committee of supposedly upright Parliamentarians chosen to discuss and deliberate the bill at length and provide recommendations to the Parliament.
Well, I don't know of any statements emanating from any of the Civil society members that actively undermines the sanctity of Parliament. However, I am about to do just what the title of this post suggests.
Let us look at the sanctity of the 15th Lok Sabha - the hallowed house of our elected representatives and then, the list of members in the Parliamentary standing committee on LokPal.
1) A third of them are have criminal records!
Yes, you read that right. As per a
report released by the NGO 'Association for Democratic Reforms' (ADR), 128 MPs, a whopping 28.14% of our Parliamentarians have been charge-sheeted in criminal cases. 55 among them have been booked in cases of a serious nature, i.e. charges that include attempt to rape as well as attempt to murder. It gets more interesting. 41 of those tainted MPs are from the INC that controls the ruling UPA coalition. Is the opposition any better? Nope, 42 BJP MPs are among the illustrious 128 listed above.
2) They hardly work!
As per the
'Citizen's Report on Governance and Development (2010)' released by the organization 'National Social Watch', the number of sittings in the Lok Sabha was a mere 64 days and that with the Rajya Sabha, 63 days. The number of bills passes witnessed a decline from 47 in 2008 to 41 in 2009, with both the houses of parliament having spent less than one-fifth, of the total time, on legislative business. This is considering that official working hours on the days that they
do work are from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., and again from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. Comfy, no?
3) Oh! How wonderfully representative they are, of us!
You would think, if you believe what you are taught in Civics classes, that the average Indian politician is a true representative of the 834 million impoverished Indians getting by on less than Rs. 20 a day - a true son of the soil and toil. Well, think again. 300 of the 552 members of the Lok Sabha are
crorepatis. A significant number among those are dollar millionaires! Now, there would be nothing wrong with that one may say. After all, it augurs well to elect the most successful among us to power. Point taken. However, things really start looking awry when you look at the affidavits filed by the candidates prior to the elections. You can examine them at the excellent site
myneta.info. Take for instance the case of the
illustrious Lalu Prasad Yadav, who, despite having only been a career politician all his life, has declared assets to the tune of over 3 crores. Or take the more
glaring case of M.K.Alagiri, the incumbent Union Minister for Chemicals and Fertilizers, who has declared assets worth a whopping 19 crores. I'm still searching for the enormously successful legal enterprise that M.K.Alagiri ought to have spearheaded for such windfall returns. No, these aren't the Mitt Romneys of India and don't delude yourself into thinking otherwise.
4) What a thoughtful electorate we have!
The National Social Watch report, (see above link), on analyzing the performance of Lok Sabha MPs found that "the performance of members inside the Lok Sabha had no bearing on their popularity or otherwise among the electorate. Among the top 10 performers in the 14th Lok Sabha, only 4 have managed to return to the 15th Lok Sabha."
Another illustrative fact is that the electorate of the country has managed to increase the percentage of MPs with criminal charges by 17.2 percent and the percentage of MPs with serious charges by 30.9 percent in the new Lok Sabha.
The democratic system has degenerated to a scheme where the politicians beguile the poor for votes with promises and botched implementations of populist schemes for the poor (including freebies like the case of doleing out colour TVs and laptops amongst others as witnessed in Tamil Nadu) and once elected, cozy up to the rich Corporate magnates, granting them enormous access and leverage at the the cost of national interest. The real losers in the entire bargain are the middle class, who are left holding the smaller end of the stick, in every interaction with the government.
5) Things would be better if you stopped blogging and tried changing the system!
I am sure they would. However, do you have any idea of the perils involved in getting into the political fray? I am talking about risks to life and limb, quite literally. When I was a teenager, I happened to witness the gruesome sight of a man with a severed limb, being chased by a mob from the opposing party, right outside our school which was an election center. You don't have to look far to find tales of gruesome ends that some independents with promising prospects came to in elections in Tamil Nadu and West Bengal. If not as an independent, which major party would you recommend that I seek the backing of? Suggestions, people! This is the plight and dilemma of the quintessential middle class citizen in a system dominated by thuggery, nepotism and dynastic politics. We do not have real political choice (we are reduced to picking the bad from among those worse) and cannot reasonably hope to run for office ourselves (without backing from the existing realpolitik). The middle class, of what is touted as the largest democracy in the world, live in what is, as far as they are concerned, an oligarchy.
6) The illustrious standing committee will sort things out on this bill!
The next time a supercilious acquaintance starts extolling the sanctity of Parliament and how Anna Hazaare's movement is misguided, thrust this post in his face.
Also, tell him that you support the Jan Lok Pal movement knowing fully well that:
a) It undermines parliamentary democracy (look at where 65 years of that has led us)
b) It primarily benefits the middle class (we are in the midst of a class war and this is our way of taking back lost ground).
c) It would create a body so powerful that it can turn dictatorial (at least in a dictatorship, we'd know whom to blame and we'd have no compunctions to revolt).