The Singer not the Song
The Vice President, who is also the Chairperson of the Rajya Sabha, threw a dinner for all those MPs whose term ended this session. Amongst the guests was Congress leader and constitutional expert, Dr Abhishek Manu Singhvi, a third term senior MP, who has been in the House for 16 years and seen many Prime Ministers and Rajya Sabha chairpersons. There was a great deal of bonhomie during the dinner on the lawns of the Vice President’s house, cutting across party lines, of the kind that is perhaps missing on the floor of the House in recent times. As Dr Singhvi pointed out once, that within the House there must be a certain access to speaking; as the saying goes, the Opposition must have its say, and the government will have its way, but that should not detract from the fact that we are bound together.
In fact, Dr Singhvi, whose wife is an accomplished singer, even sang one of his favourite songs, Kasme Vaade at the dinner, though he admitted that his was more in the league of bathroom singers. But he joked with Jagdeep Dhankhar that this is the one time the Vice President would not ask him to sit down so he was going to take advantage of the captive audience as this time the VP could not stop his speech. Speaking to NewsX when asked to compare arguing in court to speaking in Parliament, he commented that “in court the idiom is cold, logical, precise, page number, volume number… I have done this a hundred of times, get into my car at 12.30-1, change my (court) jacket and enter Parliament as the lead speaker for the Opposition after (Arun) Jaitley has opened or Venkaiah Naidu or Yashwant Sinha have opened. The style with which I will speak in Parliament will be totally different. The canvas is larger, the flourish is different, the rhetoric is different, even if you assume the topic is the same one that I argued in court. And then, sometimes, at 3.30-4.00 pm on the same day I have met the press. Here, let’s assume it’s still the same topic, the approach is to get the Nobel Prize for miniaturization. Try to encapsulate it (the argument) in two concise sentences that your people love—gagar mein sagar. So that’s the third style of speaking on the same topic.” He added that at least twice in his life, after speaking on the same topic on the above three platforms he has then driven to a rally in Meerut (on the same issue) at 5 pm and as he says, “that is the fourth style, the fourth idiom. There the canvas is even larger, logic takes a backseat to emotion and rhetoric. So you can imagine, it’s been a great learning curve for me.” Though knowing Dr Abhishek Manu Singhvi and the deft way with which he articulates the party’s response on the floor of the House, another Rajya Sabha term may well be on the cards. Though that doesn’t give him much time to shore up his singing skills but about that he says, “I did the clever lawyer’s thing of marrying a singer!”
The Great Exodus
After Jayant Chaudhary has announced his intentions to quit the I.N.D.I.A bloc, there seem to be more ex members than current ones left. Although these are uncertain times, it would be interesting to see those who will or cannot quit and tie up with the BJP. These include the DMK, RJD, SP and what’s left of the Uddhav Thackeray Sena and Sharad Pawar’s NCP. In fact, the onus of stopping the BJP is not just on the Congress, but if the party can be stopped both in Bihar and Maharashtra, curtailed in Uttar Pradesh and the South continues to hold, then the BJP could find itself in some troubled waters. This is what the optimistic amongst the I.N.D.I.A bloc are claiming and planning to focus their strategy on these tie-ups. What will help is that apart from the Samajwadi Party the Congress already has a tie-up with the DMK, RJD and the Sena-NCP combine. Well with the elections around the corner they need to figure out a silver lining very fast if they don’t want to give Narendra Modi a walkover to his targeted figure of 370 seats. (As a footnote the figure of 370 has both psephological and psychological value since it immediately reminds the voter of Article 370, a move that went down well with the public at large. But then Modi knows all too well the art of messaging).
The Wish List
After the Modi government has given a Bharat Ratna to former ex Prime Ministers P.V. Narasimha Rao and Chaudhary Charan Singh, there is wish list of sorts floating on WhatsApp, including Parkash Singh Badal, Bal Thackeray, N.T. Rama Rao, Sheikh Abdullah, Rajesh Pilot and Devi Lal. The Opposition claims that conferring the Bharat Ratnas is the BJP’s way of wooing allies. But that still does not explain why the Congress, when it was in power, did not honour its own leaders apart from the Nehru-Gandhi family, or those from amongst its allies. We all know how Narasimha Rao was sidelined by the party, isolated even after his demise. Even today, Dr Manmohan Singh is not being feted on the scale that he should. As Milind Deora pointed out in one of his exit interviews, “the Congress could easily have celebrated three decades of liberalisation in 2021”. Jokes aside, there is a lesson in that list, if you read the subtext.
A Debating Point
Despite the acrimony on the floor of the House, you still get to hear some good speeches. It is always a treat to hear Dr Shashi Tharoor, though unfortunately, one hears him more at book launches than at party fora but that’s a story for another day. His speech on the Budget was sharp and to the point as he first took on the government for the impact some of its reckless decisions have had on the economy, from “the reckless decision of demonetisation” to “the sudden no-notice lockdown”. And then added, “if demonetisation was a bad policy badly implemented, GST was a good idea, badly designed and shabbily implemented”. (Of course, he would say that the GST was good idea as it was an idea that the Congress had come up with but did not have the political clout to implement.)
He then took up the Finance Minister’s claim that the beneficiaries of this government are four castes: the poor, youth, farmers and women. And then went on to explain how these sections have not benefited under this government and asked “Kiska saath, kiska vikas… People are getting rich at the top of the pyramid without affecting the incomes of those at the bottom.” And then came the punchline: “If Mr Adani and Mr Ambani walked into this chamber right now, every MP would discover that the per capita GDP of this chamber would instantly go up but the moment they leave we would all revert to reality.
Tharoor has his punchline, mine is closer to (his) home: Why is Congress not utilising its own inhouse talent more; why overlook articulate orators like Manish Tewari and Tharoor in favour of some others who make more gaffes than debating points? At least Gaurav Gogoi has been allowed to come into his own as we saw during the last session.
Lunch Break for the Opposition
Former Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda’s winter lunch is an annual affair that has become a must-attend part of Parliament’s Budget Session. The entire Congress turned up. Hooda’s gracious hospitality is legendary, as the entire family is there playing host. The gloomy winter fog also let up for that afternoon giving the Opposition a rare moment in the sun. There was D.K. Shivakumar, Shashi Tharoor, P. Chidambaram. Partap Singh Bajwa, Manish Tewari, Gaurav Gogoi, Dr Abhishek Manu Singhvi, Rajiv Shukla, Pawan Khera, Ashwani Kumar, Janardhan Dwivedi, B.K. Hariprasad, Kuldeep Sharma, and even those who have crossed over to the other side. Ghulam Nabi Azad and Praful Patel dropped in. Some came wearing Bharat Jodo Yatra badges—well that’s one way of showing solidarity with your leader.