It might be alarmist to say so, but the accumulating body of evidence seems to suggest that mischief is afoot in the form of an orchestrated conspiracy to murder India’s democratic system of governance. The conclusion of the winter session of Parliament on December 13, during which due to daily disruption of both houses of Parliament, the important business of the country’s highest legislative assembly couldn’t be conducted for 22 days, marks a new low in the history of parliamentary governance in India. And the fact that this unprecedented paralysis of Parliament has come hard on the heels of the 543 members of the Lok Sabha having voted themselves a massive 300 percent wage hike last August even as the great majority of the populace struggles to make ends meet in an era of double-digit inflation, indicates that cynicism of the people’s elected representatives has plumbed new depths.
Although ex facie the opposition parties are at fault for stalling the business of Parliament for 22 days demanding a probe into the 2-G spectrum allocation scandal (which according to a report of the comptroller and auditor general of India has cost the public exchequer a massive sum of Rs.176,000 crore by way of lost revenue) by an all-party joint parliamentary committee (JPC), the Congress-led UPA-II ten-party coalition government, which adamantly refuses to concede this demand, is perhaps more blameworthy.
It’s a well-established principle of the law of natural justice that when a sufficiently large number of members — even if not a majority — of an organisation or institution demands a particular procedural process for the conduct of business, the demand should be accepted in the interests of protecting minority rights. For instance under a specific provision of the Companies Act 1956, minority shareholders are empowered to seek judicial relief for oppression by majority shareholders.
Indeed, there’s something suspicious about the Congress party’s adamantine refusal, notwithstanding the huge monetary loss to the exchequer and damage to the reputation of Parliament, to concede the opposition demand for a JPC probe. Admittedly the probe could be conducted by the parliamentary accounts committee or the CBI under the supervision of the Supreme Court. But these options are not infinitely superior to a probe conducted by an all-party JPC. On the contrary, by tradition, a JPC has wider powers to summon and cross-examine the high and mightiest in the country than the PAC and CBI. And surely a scandal of this magnitude needs to be investigated by an impartial all-party committee armed with the widest possible powers.
Given that a substantial percentage — even if not the majority — of the membership of Parliament favours a JPC probe into the 2-G spectrum allocation scandal and the possibility of the government-opposition deadlock extending to the budget session looming large over Parliament, national interest demands that the UPA government concedes this probe. Even if the opposition parties’ conduct in paralysing the functioning of Parliament through riotous behaviour is reprehensible, the government has a greater vested interest in orderly governance of the nation for which a smoothly functional Parliament is essential.
Revisiting national manners deficit issue
There’s a serious life skills and socialisation deficit in Indian society whose roots can be traced to the neglect of soft skills development in the country’s 1.3 million primary-secondary schools and 31,000 colleges. This awareness was forcefully impacted upon your editor while on a week’s vacation in the Andaman Islands in early December. Although one encountered a sizeable number of well-heeled businessmen, government officials and successful professionals from across the country particularly north India, West Bengal and peninsular India, it’s hard to recall a single individual who greeted fellow vacationers, tourists, shopkeepers, taxi drivers, guides, waiters etc with a smile or salutation. Most couples and individuals kept to themselves and even when greeted by others including your editor, tended to mumble monosyllables, betraying depressing lack of the art of conversation.
Although it’s inadvisable to draw conclusions on the basis of personal observation, when this experience is married with the continuous stream of reports about boorish behaviour of Indian officials and businessmen abroad, it explains why foreign trade opportunities and contracts worth millions of dollars are lost annually by Indian industry. Quite clearly the neglect of transactional and socialisation skills in school and college education, is costing the Indian economy dearly.
It’s not as though good manners and etiquette is not taught to children in their classrooms. In most schools students are introduced to the art of greeting teachers, principals and administrators with standard salutations relating to time of day (good morning, good afternoon etc). But there seems to be little awareness within the teachers’ community that polite salutations are due not only to authority figures, but also to peers and people lower down in the pecking order who provide valuable — often indispensable — goods and services to middle class and elite citizens. This manners and interpersonal skills deficit which begins in classrooms, is carried over into workplaces and social spaces which consequently tend to be fractious and disharmonious, as witnessed by unruly and impolite behaviour which is routine in Parliament for instance.
Once upon a time the hallmark of superior ‘public’ schools was the well-mannered ladies and gentlemen they shaped and nurtured. But with Left and communist ideologies becoming fashionable during the 20th century, such institutional aspirations were rubbished as bourgeois affectation. Now with once-trendy communist ideology consigned to the dustbin of history, and new communication technologies transforming the world into a global village accelerating interaction between people of different races, cultures and traditions, the public interest demands revisiting the issue of teaching courteous transactional and socialisation skills in the nation’s classrooms. Teachers need to realise that this is an essential pre-condition of creating harmonious work and social spaces in the real world beyond school gates.