The logjam over the Goods and Services Tax (GST), with the Congress leading the Opposition in making sure that hugely important work was given the go-by, has taken a toll on almost the entire session of the Rajya Sabha and brought infamy to the institution of Parliament. It has caused huge losses to the national exchequer in terms of man-hours, and jeopardised the Narendra Modi government’s growth agenda.
Likewise, in the preceding session, it was the Congress’s obstructionist attitude towards the Land Acquisition Bill that had paralysed Parliament because the BJP lacked a majority in the Upper House. The bill, apparently, has been given a quiet burial by a ruling dispensation that is showing no skills of flexibility and persuasion.
Ironically, it was the Congress that was the architect of the GST Bill when it was in power. By sabotaging it now, it has made it appear that the party was only paying back the BJP in the same coin for scuttling it.
There couldn’t have been a more shocking example of national interest being brazenly sacrificed at the altar of political expediency, first by a leading political force that is today in the saddle in New Delhi and secondly by a party that has ruled the country for six of the seven decades after Independence.
The GST Bill’s non-passage and the behaviour of Members of Parliament are evidence of how low political morality has sunk. The founder of the Nationalist Congress Party, Sharad Pawar’s, sense of outrage over the depths to which parliamentary behaviour has dipped is fully justified. Pawar could be faulted for many things, but there is no denying that during his long political career, his circle of friends in the political sphere has extended to virtually all parties that have a presence in Parliament.
It is meaningless for the Congress to join issue with Big Business for its criticism of the party for stalling reforms. Instead, it needs to look within and mend its own ways. The business lobby will naturally espouse its own interests, and if that is in unison with national interest it is perfectly legitimate.
The unseemly war of words between Union External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on the one hand and Rahul Gandhi on the other touched its nadir in Parliament this time. It was indeed Rahul who started it all when he accused Sushma of committing a criminal act by helping Lalit Modi, adding that her act “deserved jail”. His earlier statement that “Sushmaji’s family has received money from Lalit Modi... she should tell the country exactly how much money has Lalit Modi paid her family to keep him out of jail” was in rank bad taste.
Not one to be pushed around and slandered, Sushma retaliated by advising Rahul, who is fond of going on holidays, to take another holiday and do introspection—to study his family’s history and how much money his family received from Quattrocchi, in reference to the Bofors case.
She read from late Congress leader Arjun Singh’s autobiography and asked the party why did they take Warren Anderson, the key man in Union Carbide at the time of the Bhopal gas tragedy, out of the country at a crucial juncture.
It is time that Parliament was allowed to function and important Bills like those on GST and land acquisition were debated and voted on in a civilised manner. Those who sabotage the process of development must beware of the people’s wrath.
If the Congress is unrelenting, it must be isolated and painted as the villain of the piece.
k.kamlendra@gmail.com
Kanwar is a former journalist