labels: Writers & columnists, Economy - general, Prem Shankar Jha
Another dawn news
23 July 2008

Not only did the outcome of the trust vote secure India's energy and technology future, its greater victory was  the outcome of  Parliament's battle with its own collective conscience. In that battle conscience won by a hair, writes Prem Shankar Jha

Prem Shankar JhaAfter the trust vote on yesterday, a television channel aired an hour-long programme titled, ''Singh is King''. The caption appeared above the photograph of a smiling Dr Manmohan Singh, but the anchor person could not resist asking, ''but which Singh?".

That is the  question that most of India is asking itself as it emerges from the most prolonged, and most openly conducted political struggle the country has ever witnessed. For the question that the anchor, Sagarika Ghosh asked was not about two persons but about what they represented in Indian politics.

The first, Dr Manmohan Singh, is the epitome of the anti-politician: the man who has spent his entire life framing policies that will determine, indeed safeguard the future of our country, who was thrown into politics by an economic crisis and into the prime minister's seat by an unexpected Congress victory and a Congress president who had never coveted power for its own sake. 

The second  is the brash, ebullient Amar Singh of the Samajwadi party, to whom power is the very stuff of life. If Amar Singh has a vision for India's future, he has hidden it very well. Instead he revels in the management of political power, and is not particularly concerned about the methods he  uses to do so.

For many Indians Dr Manmohan Singh's victory is alloyed by his need to share its fruits  with the likes of Amar Singh. "What promises did the Congress make to the Samajwadi Party and to other smaller parties in the Lok Sabha to secure their  support?" is the question on everyone's lips. "How will the UPA fulfil them? How far and how quickly will doing so drag it, and Dr Singh, down  into the mud?''

Fortunately for all of us, the rapid approach of the next elections may put a brake on the changes that the UPA can afford to make.

For this writer, however, yeterday's victor was neither Dr Singh nor Mr Singh. It was India. Not only did Tuesday's vote  secure its energy and technology future. Its greater victory was  the outcome of  Parliament's battle with its own collective conscience. In that battle conscience won by a hair. That is the victory which could herald a new dawn for our country.

Many people will wonder whether I am not being fanciful. Where was conscience in the rowdy , unruly scenes we witnessed on Tuesday? Where was conscience in the waving of fistfuls of thousand-rupee notes before the cameras of the media and in the well of Parliament? On the contrary, didn't Parliament plumb the depths of depravity, and that too before the eyes of half the country?

It did, but as the day wore on it also became apparent that  something else was creeping, almost unnoticed, into the debate. It was a growing discomfort  among the opponents of the deal with the position in which they found themselves. It  was apparent in the  unusual quietness of the  BJP's  front benchers, the  silence maintained by Mr L K Advani and the last ditch attempt to derail the proceedings of the house rather than allow a vote.

The discomfort on the opposition benches deepened when Rahul Gandhi made a stirring speech  inviting the opposition to consider the bill in the light of India's national interest. The discomfort manifested itself in a growing chorus of interruptions. Clearly, the opponents did not want the people of India to hear him. But for  them things only got worse, as Sangeeta Singh, Owaisi, Omar Abdullah, Mehbooba Mufti and a half dozen representatives of small parties also invoked the nation's welfare while supporting the government. 

By the time the voting began, the BJP in particular had realised just what a monumental blunder it had committed. It could, with  justification,  have taken the credit for paving the way for the bill. Instead it tamely surrendered its trump card, nationalism to the Congress. As for the Left, Owaisi, Omar Abdullah, Mehbooba Mufti, and several earlier speakers gave the lie direct to its claim that the Muslims of India were opposed to the bill.

The surreptitious return of the national interest into the debate was finally confirmed by  the fact that 13 of the opponents of the government chose not to vote. Some actually left the house before the division.

The  surreptitious re-entry of national interest into the debate shows that Parliament itself is poised on the edge of a historic change.  A new generation of parliamentarians is coming to the fore which considers serving in Parliament a duty and not a perquisite. If their  idealism is nurtured and not snuffed out, Indian democracy will finally come of age. But if the  UPA chooses only to bask  in its victory and returns to 'business as usual', then one or two decades of turning a blind eye to the deals through whuich parties raise cash to run their machines and fight elections will turn today's idealists also into cynics and party hacks.

The way to prevent this has been known for a long time: it is to set up a system of generous state funding for recognised political parties that frees them  from the need  to make compromises with those who raise money for them. That way lies pork barrel politics, the rise of money bags, the emasculation of elected party leaders, and the turning away of  idealistic young people who want to join politics. Dr. Singh has believed in the virtues of state funding at least since 1994. It was a promise made in the Common Minimum Programme. The government still has time to implement it. 


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