The unfolding of events in India’s Parliament last week are symptomatic of how every institution in India is either under attack or being sought to be crippled. The shameful behaviour of elected MPs is a pointer to the fact that today party leaders are looking only at winnable candidates and not at their pedigree or perhaps their decency quotient. I was amazed to see the manner in which Speakers of both Houses were quick to adjourn but reticent to act. It is their responsibility to enforce House discipline but then when even the Speakers’ position has been compromised by the government of the day, what can you expect?

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Add to that an Opposition which revels in this mischief, you have a heady concoction of shame and lethargy. This was the worst-performing Lok Sabha in the history of India just when we were in the throes of every conceivable crisis be it political, social or economic. At a time like this, parties should have come together for the greater national cause but then, that as a concept, is alien to them.

The man, who ran away, Arvind Kejriwal, brought a sense of the farcical to his form of running the government. He wanted to do away with the legislature and instead conduct legislative business in sports stadia.

When we have these kinds of irresponsible people at the helm of affairs, are you surprised we are in such a mess after all! We have seen a steady decline in the behaviour of our elected representatives. That is because the governments that rule, rule with such a thin margin and are always seeking to appease anyone who is not part of them just so that they can stay in power. Add to that the sense of morality has been so done away with, that you now have a situation in India, where democracy exists through symbolism and not in reality. The manner, in which the Telangana Bill was passed is reprehensible to say the least. I could have never imagined that one day India’s Parliament would reduce itself to a pitiable farce in order to justify its weakened existence.

Then you had the incident of the pepper spray MP. He should have been arrested, expelled from Parliament and shamed to his dying days. But instead he is being venerated which brings me to yet another point. If the voter is as stupid to be taken in by this kind of nonsense, then he or she perhaps deserves the kinds of louts we have roaming the corridors of each House in Parliament.

Most of our MPs are indecent, self-serving thugs and thugs need to be shown their place. But for that you need to have Presiding Officers who have courage and a political base and are not just willing wimps.

Both Houses today have weak Presiding Officers who owe their very existence either political or otherwise to the Government of the day. They lack a spine and for that matter any willingness to safeguard the very institution they are lording over. So don’t expect anything from these two.

My submission is that someone should file a PIL in the Supreme Court, mention the fact that our elected representatives are glorified thieves and scoundrels and are costing the exchequer Rs9 crore every day that the Houses sit. This is our taxpayer’s money and we need to make some of these louts accountable. So what is required is a three-step process: Identify such scoundrels when they behave abominably; suspend them the next time and when they do it a third time, debar them from standing for any election. That to my mind is the only way to get indecent people to mend their ways or else this will repeat itself.

With greater vigour and greater shame.