Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Latest pot boiler: Indian Parliament

It's quite some time that I have written something in my blog. Actually I was waiting for something interesting to write. The recent developments in Indian politics for the past few days was providing me enough fodder to write something. Then today's incident in the Parliament was so interesting that I was compelled to take up my pen again.
Let me keep all statistics aside. Just the turn of events were enough for even the most apolitical person to be interested in politics. I believe all the proceedings in parliament are recorded meticulously. I'm sure any aspiring director, looking for a 'hatke' thriller with all elements of sex, love, passion, betrayal, violence, vengeance, loyalty and all other possible ingredients that guarantee the box office success of any movie, should study all these proceedings properly to come up with a nice plot. Lately there have been enough of thrillers showing a brother sleeping with his brother's wife, wife getting her husband killed in order to help her ex-boyfriend, sister seducing her sister's husband and finally provoking to have sex on a rainy night, every other person in an office having sex with with office mates at an office mate's flat and many more interesting and, at times, unbelievable plots. I think more interesting things happen in our very own parliament. Off course the sex part might be implicit at times, but all other aspects are quite explicit. The only difference is that in the movies there's still a hero and a villain in most cases. The hero is more often than not shown as the virtuous one. But in the parliament it's really hard to get a hero. It's a story of all villains. We don't have a choice to elect a hero against a villain. We've the option to just choose the lesser devil, or the shit that stinks less or the dog that barks less. If by mistake there appears a hero, he is never brought in front of the electorate perhaps because his peers might think that the electorates, like man eaters, might get the taste of human blood and henceforth always look for men, rather than goats and sheep.That's why Dr. Manmohan Singh has never been allowed to contest a Lok Sabha election. We never got a chance to elect a clean, educated, upright politician.
Today's climax before the trust vote was just beyond anyone's imagination. Even if it turns out that the BJP had orchestrated the entire episode of three of their MPs being offered three crores by Congress and Samajwaadi Party top notches for abstaining from voting, still the turn of events can surely make Hitchcock embarrassed. It's known to all that each major party at state or center has been resorting to 'horse trading' since ever. Very few come to limelight but there's no denying the fact that this is as prevelant as the cops taking bribes. Only few cases, like Narasimha Rao's case of bribing Shibu Shoren in nineties for support, hog the headlines. But never the episode had a climax like today when three BJP MPs, who themselves are not Yudhisthirs in their own space, displayed one crore of rupees, allegedly given as advance payment for abstaining from voting, in the parliament. There's no reason to believe that these three MPs wanted to uphold their integrity and hence brought the entire episode to public. It's highly possible that they might have got better 'offers' from BJP to do so. Gone are the days when we were the only people who used to get multiple offers from various companies and use one against the other to crak better 'deals'. Shibu Soren had offers from both BJP and Congress. These three MPs would surely have multiple offers.
The dynamics that play the final act is a matter of suspense. Like it is really a suspense who actually wrote the script that Dr. Manmohan Singh couldn't read in the parliament and finally uploaded at his website. Anyone who has been following him for the past 17 years (since he became the finance minister in Narasimha Rao's government in early nineties) know very well that he would be the last person to write this -
The Leader of Opposition, Shri L.K. Advani has chosen to use all manner of abusive objectives to describe my performance. He has described me as the weakest Prime Minister, a nikamma PM, and of having devalued the office of PM. To fulfill his ambitions, he has made at least three attempts to topple our government. But on each occasion his astrologers have misled him. This pattern, I am sure, will be repeated today. At his ripe old age, I do not expect Shri Advani to change his thinking. But for his sake and India's sake, I urge him at least to change his astrologers so that he gets more accurate predictions of things to come.
Dr. Manmohan Singh has been the best example of "If you're bad, why can't I be good". His restraint in his speeches and reaction to critics have been exemplary. But still finally we saw this very unexpected thing. This is as unusual as Johny Walker talking in Amitabh's voice!!
The role of Left is really very amusing. They are like cancerous growth on India's body. The problem is that they are not big enough viruses to attack the heart or brain so that anyone would die, but they are irritating enough to attack areas like throats, breasts etc which even when operated have some embarrassing marks. The Left are not a significant entity that can kill India and that has been proved beyond doubt today when even after their withdrawal Dr. Manmohan Singh is still going ahead with the Nuclear Deal. But they are indeed very irritating - something like those insects that fill your lamp shades around Diwali and you've to clean them every year. The Left can provide enough comic relief from time to time. Today's incident should have taught a good lesson to all the comrades. In most Hindi movies you always have some small-time rowdies and thugs who play as nth level local agents to the big don. These people are off course not the Gabbars or Shakals, not even the Shakti Kapoors of the day. They are like Keshto Mukherjee playing a don's role after 100 pegs of scotch. The Left are like that..... not much to worry about, but enough to laugh out loud.
Then there are the vamps - the Mayawatis, Jayalalitas, Meneka Gandhis, Mamta Banerjees and Sushma Swarajs. Each one is unique in their own apporach. Sushma Swaraj doesn't want sexy stuff in TVs, Mamta Banerjee is good at blocking roads at the peak hours in office days in South Calcutta and playing kabaddi-kabaddi with Vajpayee, Jayalalitha allegedly has the biggest collection of shoes and perhaps one of the most influencial ladies in the world who officially has a girlfriend, Meneka Gandhi is concerned more about the death of animals than humans and Mayawati aspires to become the first Prime Minister in India who would prefer to talk to the President of United States in Hindi!! Well, I totally forgot about the Congress' High Command, without whose diktat no one in Congress even winks!! Wow, isn't that a wide range of characters for writing an interesting story?
But the striking thing is that despite all these, our country continues to grow at a rate of 8% per annum. That's a miracle. Just think if our politicians were educated and sophisticated then what all we could have done.That's another suspense. You never know. Perhaps the skill and expertise that the work force of India has developed owes everything to this non functional politicians. Had they been good we all won't have worked so hard for our country......
Vande Mataram!!

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