Over the past few years both houses of parliament – the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha have seen disruptions of the kind not witnessed in the past. Gone is the decorum and decency to listen with respect to voices both from the treasury and opposition benches. Since 2014, attacks have been more personal and sustained, with slogan raising inside the house becoming commonplace. As a result, important matters affecting the common people such as price rise that is galloping at a furious speed remains unaddressed. In this monsoon session, both the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha have been disrupted on account of the Prime Minister’s obstinacy in not attending parliament to discuss the Manipur violence that has carried on for over three months. Primarily, the question to the Prime Minister is why is he evading questions on such a grave situation?
As the head of the Government the Prime Minister is answerable to the people. That is a constitutional duty and he is doing no one a favour. The entire responsibility for answering questions on Manipur cannot be laid at the doorstep of the Home Minister alone. The Prime Minister is the head of the Government and answerable to the people of this country. There is no getting away from this! It is bad enough that on the rare occasions that the Prime Minister deigns to give an interview to the media he handpicks the media persons and channels he has cultivated. This disdain for the media would not have been tolerated in the past but now it has become the norm because large swathes of the majority Hindu community in this country believe in the slogan, “Hindu Khatre Mein Hain” (Hindus are in danger) and that Prime Minister Modi and the BJP are their only saviours. Narratives that are carefully constructed and packaged by tech-savvy social media warriors have been able to spread disinformation at great speed and to brainwash the large majority that are incapable of differentiating between disinformation from correct information.
On Wednesday, when the reinstated MP of Wayanad, Rahul Gandhi spoke he was bitterly critical of the BJP Government’s silence on Manipur and accused it of dividing the state. As an Opposition MP, Rahul Gandhi has the right to criticise the central government’s inaction on Manipur. But his bitter rival Smriti Irani who holds the important portfolio of Women and Child Welfare spat venom on the Opposition. Irani should have been the first to travel to Manipur and visit the relief camps where hundreds of men, women and children are cramped together and some have even delivered babies in these camps because hospitals are not accessible. This is the basic duty of a minister of the concerned department and a woman at that! Yet her speech in parliament was a round of whataboutery on West Bengal, Rajasthan et al. Clearly, democracy is in the docks and ordinary citizens are losing out.
