Stop dreaming of a Lokpal! Our MPs just gave us a 'kick'

29 December 2011. Mark that day in your minds, and never forget it, for it represents a dark day for Indian parliamentary democracy.

As always, the wisdom of crowds summed it up best. On Twitter, an indignant user noted that the last word that Rajya Sabha chairman Hamid Ansari uttered last night was “die” (as in sine die, to adjourn the House indefinitely).

It was an entirely appropriate word, since what we saw last night, as the debate on the Lokpal Bill dragged on, was, in some ways, the death of democracy. The only thing that needed to be done was to perform the last rites, but in one of those moments of supreme irony, Ansari asked for Vande Mataram to be played.

Thus, in the finest traditions of the Theatre of the Absurd that our parliament has come to mimic, was the curtain rung down on one of the most sordid parliamentary sessions, which had only earlier in the day sizzled with lively debates.

The entire chaos and disruption that we saw close to midnight last night was, as political analyst Yogendra Yadav said on CNN-IBN, “parliamentary match-fixing” of the worst kind and a “diabolical plot”.

CNN-IBN had predicted, right down to the microdetail, exactly how the script was going to play out.

Watch the CNN-IBN video predicting the same:

Well before RJD MP Rajniti Prasad walked up to Minister V Narayanaswamy’s seat, picked up the Lokpal Bill documents and shredded them to bits, CNN-IBN had reported, citing sources, that “a bitter exchange could lead to chaos in the house and this will take the bill up to midnight and the session will come to an end.”

Bhupendra Chaubey reported, on the basis of his conversations with two senior ministers who were involved in the UPA government’s unsuccessful scramble to marshall the votes, that Rajniti Prasad would “run down the clock” by prolonging his speech, and would “play a very active role in whatever happens from here on.”

The government for sure covered itself in infamy with its naked filibustering and delaying tactics to avoid a vote it was certain to lose - because in its calculation, it was more “politically expedient”.

But in a larger sense, it was a game that the entire political establishment, across the political spectrum, was playing. The truth of the matter is that the Lokpal Bill was, as we had noted here , a dead duck. No party ever really wanted a Bill that would establish a strong Lokpal – because it would mark the end of politics as usual.

But since the pressure of civil society to act had forced them to be seen to be doing something, they got together and played out a mock match. Over the past seven months that the debate has been going on, the Congress progressively whittled down the Lokpal Bill so as to render it virtually impotent. And the Opposition in its entirety scuttled even that feeble bill by taking the high moral ground.

In the course of Thursday, we were treated to a lively debate between Arun Jaitley and Abhishek Manu Singhvi. The thrust and parry of the debate was widely acknowledged as marking a shining moment for Indian parliamentary democracy, but what that characterisation hides is that for the political parties, the Lokpal Bill is just another issue on which they can play political football. The diehard BJP fans claim that Jaitley aced Singhvi, and the loyal Congresss followers will rebut that Singhvi pulverised every one of Jaiteley’s arguments. But all their claptrap was intended solely to mask their own reluctance to see what the people really want: a strong Lokpal and strong Lokayukta institutions to prevent corruption.

Any weapon came in handy to deflect attention away from the larger goal: specious claims that the federal structure of the Constitution was being demolished. And oh, the irony of having to listen to leaders like Ram Vilas Paswan, who sabotaged the Women’s Reservation Bill, hold forth on the need for reservation for women on the Lokpal panel! For sheer hypocrisy this is hard to top.

What next for the Lokpal? It goes into the deep freeze, from which only a miracle will retrieve it. There’s of course the promise of reviving it in the Budget session with all the amendments in place. But don’t hold your breath. No party really wants a strong Lokpal Bill, and if they do take it up at all, they will only whittle it down even further to the point of utter uselessness. After the Assembly elections are out of the way, and now that Team Anna has been sent packing dishonourably (with even public apathy contributing to it), there is absolutely no pressure on the political establishment to act.

In the mind-bending movie Inception, the dream-within-a-dream-within-a dream could be abruptly terminated by administering what is known as a “kick” , which snaps the dreamer awake.

For all of us, the Lokpal Bill remains a distant dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream, with no realistic chance of it being realised. But what our parliamentarians did yesterday was to give us the ‘kick’ - and bring us back to consciousness and to sobering reality.

Wake up and smell the coffee. And, oh, kiss the Lokpal goodbye.