Parliamentary Debates Re-defined!

By Somya Barpanda (St. Stephen's College)

It was just another mundane weekday and I was lazily surfing through TV channels. As there was nothing interesting being aired, I had to give in to my mom’s insistence to put on the LIVE parliamentary proceedings on Lok Sabha TV. Now, before you all roll over your eyes and form certain unpleasant impressions about me, I must clarify that I had intended to switch to my next best pass-time alternative i.e. social networking and to leave our house’s news buff at peace with her netas. But the scene that popped up on-screen was so riveting that it made me change my plans.

An exasperated Pranab Mukherjee and a feisty Sushma Swaraj were playing the blame-game as to whose party had the record of disrupting maximum number of Parliament’s working hours and whose party was more tolerant to corrupt party members. The long heated exchange between the two could have tipped off any drama ‘scripted’ for a reality-show. This bickering over black money and scams was indeed ‘for real’ and yet meaty! As the finger-pointing exercise picked pace, the other MPs, some of whom had till now been struggling with their urge to doze off, rose up from their seats and became boisterous. Wooden desks were banged and feet stomped on the green-carpeted floor of the Sansad Bhavan. Amidst all this commotion, our endearing honourable Speaker’s polite request to all, to sit down and maintain silence, felt like a nightingale’s melodious cry bogged down by a band of hard-rockers. Had my strict primary-school teacher been in her place, she would have, in no time, regained the decorum of the place. I bet she would then have re-thought if our class still deserved the tag of ‘a fish market’.  While tempers soared, the eye-candy of the show; pretty Mrs. Gandhi blinked and our pious PM seemed unperturbed. He was right about him not being a lame duck. He looked like an innocent swan swimming peacefully in his Mansarovar, oblivious to the global warming around.

I marvelled at the natural set of distinct characters playing their interesting roles up there on the screen. I thought these Lok Sabha sessions, if supported by some publicity, have good potential to give all sop-operas and reality shows a run for their money. So amused was I by the whole thing’s entertainment quotient that I almost gave my mom the scare of her life, when she saw me watching the next day’s proceedings voluntarily. It had a fiery Mamatadi contesting Congress’ claim of the FDI in retail benefitting farmers.  She donned her “Cholbe Na” (won’t do!) attitude throughout and was not ready to lend an ear to any counter- arguments. The other day, Mr Lalu Prasad Yadav had all Lok Sabha people rolling in uncontrollable laughter as he spoke animatedly about his reservations regarding the draft of the Lok Pal bill.

All this left me in splits of laughter. My mother gave me an admonishing look and said in her typical serious tone, “Debate is at the heart of democracy.” But the only thing that came to my mind was a leading daily; Times of India’s column that appears during elections. It is called the ‘Dance of Democracy”.