‘All the world’s a stage …’

• P. Chidambaram, M.P.

“and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts.” — William Shakespeare

When you read this column on June 9, 2024, Mr. Narendra Modi would be the Hon’ble Prime Minister of India for the third time — but it will not be the same Mr. Modi. It will be Exit, Mr. Modi, the authoritarian Prime Minister of a single-party government and Enter, Mr. Modi, the Prime Minister of a coalition of many parties with barely a 20-seat majority (of which TDP has 16 MPs and JDU 12 MPs). It will be a wholly new experience for him. Mr Modi did not prepare for this role in his nearly 55 years of public life as a pracharak, General Secretary of BJP, Chief Minister of Gujarat and Prime Minister of India. He will play in a game with which he is unfamiliar.

Democracy partially restored

In the just concluded Lok Sabha elections, the people of India achieved many things that were considered nearly impossible until a few weeks ago: · the two Houses will be run according to the Rules and the consensus of the House, and not at the discretion of the Presiding Officer and the Leader of the House; · the composition of the various House Committees will be more balanced and the Chairs more evenly distributed among the political parties; · there will be a recognized Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha with a sufficient number of MPs in the Opposition; · the Constitution of India cannot be amended unless there is a consensus among the Treasury benches and the Opposition benches in Parliament; · meetings of the Cabinet or the Council of Ministers will no longer be a formal endorsement of decisions taken by the Prime Minister and, in many cases, already implemented — for example, the Cabinet will no more be only ‘informed’ of a drastic step like demonetization; · the rights of states will be acknowledged and better safeguarded; · devolution of funds to the states and allocation of funds to ministries/departments and schemes will be less arbitrary and to the satisfaction of the constituent parties of the coalition; · the Prime Minister may be obliged to be present in the Houses more often, answer questions and participate in important debates.

Learning from mandate

The people have spoken. They value freedom, right to speech and expression, right to privacy, and right to protest. The government must give up its penchant for filing spurious cases for ‘sedition’ and ‘defamation’. ‘Encounter’ and ‘bulldozer justice’ must be abandoned (a lesson especially to Mr. Adityanath, Chief Minister of UP). The Ram Temple is beyond politics and should never again be invoked for political purposes (ask 77-year old Mr. Awadhesh Prasad of Samajwadi Party elected from Faizabad constituency and Mr. Saket Misra, son of Mr. Nripendra Misra, Former Principal Secretary to Prime Minister and Head of the Temple Construction Trust, defeated in Shravasti constituency).

The people want a truly free media: no more manufactured exit polls; no more doting (and boring) coverage of every twitch of the eyebrow of the Prime Minister; no more questions tailored to pre-scripted answers; and no more obedient reading from the handouts of ED and CBI. The people want regional parties to be true to their core beliefs and not show one face in Delhi and another face in the state capital.

Such parties will be punished as in the cases of AGP, SAD, JJP, BRS and JD(S) or severely warned as in the cases of BJD and YSRCP. There is a lesson for TDP and JDU.

Opposition must press agenda

The Opposition has an opportunity, after 10 years, to behave like a parliamentary opposition. It must press its agenda inside Parliament and outside. Here are some ideas that captured the imagination of the people and elected a number of I.N.D.I.A. bloc candidates: · conduct a socio-economic and caste survey. · implement forthwith the Constitution (106th Amendment) Act and provide one-third reservation for women in elected legislatures beginning 2025. · implement a minimum wage of Rs. 400 per day for every kind of employment, including under MGNREGS. · appoint a permanent commission on agricultural indebtedness and waive agricultural debt according to its recommendations. · fill the 30 lakh vacancies in the government and government-controlled bodies. · modify, if necessary, and implement forthwith the Apprentices Act to compel every qualified business establishment to appoint apprentices and share the burden of stipends. · scrap the Agniveer scheme. · suspend the implementation of the Citizenship Amendment Act until its constitutionality is decided by the Supreme Court. · bring the investigation agencies (CBI, ED, NIA, SFIO, NCB, etc.) under the oversight of a joint parliamentary committee.

A new game

A new game will begin on June 9. New players will be in the forefront. Watch the exits and entrances.

(The author is a former Union Minister)

Courtesy: The Indian Express