Parsa Venkateshwar Rao Jr | Govt has it easy in Parl session as Opp. miss their mark

In the curtailed Winter Session of Parliament, what was seen was yet another clash between the government and the Opposition, which did not convey any substantial meaning even as important legislative work got done like the passing of the supplementary demands for grants of the finance ministry. The debates, when they took place, did not throw much light on the economy. Former finance minister P. Chidambaram made a pointed demand on how the additional amount of more than Rs 3 lakh crores demanded by the government would be met, whether through borrowing or through revenues, and finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman replied that it will be met through additional revenues so that the deficit levels are not breached.

She also adopted the self-righteous tone saying that the policy of targeted subsidies adopted by the government had saved it from the disaster of slipping into a recession. What the Opposition failed to point out was that the people suffered enormously during the Covid-19 pandemic period while the government saved its pennies, and that the money spent on free rations for 80 crore people did not cost the exchequer much, and that it was the impoverished state of 80 crore people that saved the government economic trouble, not its self-proclaimed prudence. Similarly, the boast that the government delivered billion doses of vaccines did not again cost much because, according to the government, Rs 19,000 crores out of the allocated Rs 35,000 crores was spent on vaccinations. So, the government did not bear any burden of Covid-19 as much as people did, especially the lower middle class, the poor, and small businesses. In developed countries, governments were forced to fork out money as the standard of living and with it the cost of living was high, and therefore the budgetary deficits in advanced economies like the United Kingdom.

In the Lok Sabha, Trinamul Congress member Mahua Moitra pinned down the government on the inflation-dented day-to-day economic reality of the majority of Indians. Despite interventions like that of Ms Moitra, the debate was weak because the government, backed by more than a comfortable majority in the Lok Sabha, was not willing to pay attention to what the Opposition had to say. It can be argued that no government with a majority would ever pay attention to the Opposition and that the Narendra Modi government is no exception. And the exchange between the government and the Opposition boils down to rhetorical barbs.

The government did not want a debate on the situation on the China border, in the wake of the clash between the Indian and Chinese troops in the Tawang sector of Arunachal Pradesh. The government made a statement and it wanted the matter to rest there. A debate was necessary because it was not about defence matters but about the misreading by the Modi government of China's policies and intentions. The Opposition could have used the opportunity to demand that the government explain the rationale of India becoming a part of the Quad, comprising the United States, Australia, Japan and India, which is an implicit counter to China's growing importance in the Indo-Pacific region. But the Modi government was keen not to expose its flanks to its namby-pamby prance into informal groupings like the Quad or that of the I2U2 (India-Israel-UAE-US). When it was in power, the Congress too many a time had blocked important debates, but one could recall the number of times the India-US civil nuclear deal was discussed threadbare in the Lok Sabha, and how then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh answered the criticism, though it could be argued never convincingly enough.

External affairs minister S. Jaishankar had replied to the debate on the maritime piracy bill in his characteristic sober manner in the Rajya Sabha, and he was also restrained in his tone about India's G-20 presidency. Home minister Amit Shah had no trouble in making a generalised statement about the good intentions of the government to eradicate the drug menace in the country, which did not amount to much with regard to the accountability of the government. The government got away easy in this Winter Session, while the Opposition managed to hit out at the government hard enough on some issues. Though this may be good news for the government, and provide solace to the Opposition, the people are left high and dry because many of the issues that concern them do not get reflected in the parliamentary debates.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the ruling BJP have sent out the message that the Opposition is in direct and indirect ways anti-national, and that it the Modi government alone that plays the role of the guardian of the country. This is a very harmful attitude in a democracy. Of course, Mr Modi is not the first leader to have adopted this kind of an attitude. Indira Gandhi and the Congress had the same attitude after the 1971 landslide victory. Going by the percentage of votes, Mr Modi did not score a landslide victory either in 2014 or in 2019. So, for the ruling party to believe that the Opposition is irrelevant is a folly. The Opposition too has contributed its own bit to the Modi government's complacent attitude by flailing its hands, and trying to score its own brownie points when the need was to pin the government down on its half-baked schemes which are not strengthening the economy. The unemployment levels and poverty levels in the country are critical and the Opposition has failed to highlight it with facts and figures. The Opposition fails to do its homework, and the boastful Narendra Modi government rests on its non-existent laurels.