It’s not easy to turn down an invitation from Rashtrapati Bhavan. Earlier this month, I was mortified at having to do this not once but twice. I was invited by the President of India for breakfast meetings with groups of MPs on March 13 and then, on my polite refusal, on March 18.
Less than a year into the BJP government’s second term, even veteran opposition MPs are learning new lessons about Parliament. A bigger majority has only made the governing party more arrogant and the government less tolerant of genuine debate and discussion. In fact, there seems to be a systemic plan to make Parliament irrelevant.
Parliament’s Budget Session has resumed and will last a month. Usually, this phase is extremely productive in terms of deliberation and discussion, debate and legislation, and for the conclusion of the budgetary exercise. Unless there are exigencies, the government and the Opposition, and of course the Chair, approach the session with sobriety and purpose.
If you asked my father Neil O’Brien, the pioneer who brought quizzing to India in 1967, what his favourite subjects were, pat would come the reply: heavyweight boxing and World War II. Our bedtime stories, oddly enough, were not about Hansel and Gretel.
When looking at the BJP’s election victory in Tripura, one needs to be mindful of the fine print. In football terms, this is a big victory by a struggling team in a football league – against a team going through even worse form and facing relegation to a lower division. This is not quite a World Cup victory.
The Rs 20,000-crore plus Nirav Modi scam has led to the collapse of Punjab National Bank’s share value and also posed a big question mark on the accountability and regulatory systems that govern our government-owned banks. Common investors and depositors have suffered while Mr Modi is celebrating in his luxury hotel suite in New York.
In the days before the BJP-led government abruptly merged the Railway Budget with the General Budget, there used to be a separate debate in parliament on the Railway Budget and, thereby, the state of Indian Railways. This was a serious matter, in keeping with the important role that the Railways play in India’s economy and society. In the Rajya Sabha, 12 hours were devoted to discussion on the General Budget and 12 hours for the Railway Budget.
As a grandchild of Indian Railways – my maternal grandfather and several members of my mother’s extended family worked for the Railways – I have a special affection for this institution, and for trains in general. My political career has seen me observe and work with the Railways in more than one capacity, and I used to be a keen student of the Railway Budget till the BJP-led government went and derailed it. Since then I have listened to the Finance Minister’s Budget speech with extra care – both to try and make sense of the government’s financial and economic plans, as well as to pick up the appallingly few lines that are now devoted to the gigantic infrastructure of the Indian Railways.
In many ways, the Economic Surveys of the NDA government have tended to be more honest documents than Budget speeches, especially with the sleight-of-hand of budgetary and economic figures.
While finalising the themes and essays for my newly published book Inside Parliament, I considered an idea about how bogus numbers, rather than bogus ideas, were now the preferred propaganda tool.
