Time to Think

Outsource Parliament
22 Oct 2008, 0017 hrs IST, Jug Suraiya

Is it time we outsourced our Parliament? With a global recession looming, the need of the hour — as Wipro CEO Azim Premji has stressed — is for every
one, from companies to governments, to be lean and mean. If parliamentary sessions are anything to go by, our MPs are far from being either when it comes to getting on with the job: this year Parliament has met just 32 times (instead of a desirable minimum of 100), the lowest number of sittings since independence. Parliament costs the country Rs 440 crore a year to run. Or rather, to dawdle. This apart, there’s the incalculable loss of cost overruns thanks to legislative delay. Even when Parliament does meet, the event is more akin to a three-ring circus than to a meaningful attempt to tackle the huge and complex problems that beset the world’s most populous democracy: the well of the House is stormed; epithets and more tangible missiles are freely hurled. In a new twist to parliamentary theatre, a Bodo MP from Assam reportedly attempted a ‘striptease’ in the House in order to address — or undress — the issue of intercommunity clashes in the state. At this rate, the Union Cabinet might well redesignate itself as the Union Cabaret. How much longer can we continue to afford such literally criminal dereliction of national duty (125 MPs in the current Lok Sabha are so-called ‘history-sheeters’, and have a record of crime)? Taking a tip from Indian Premier League cricket which sources the best players from around the world, irrespective of nationality, suppose we were to have an Indian Parliamentary League comprising legislators from across the globe with tried-and-tested credentials in honesty and efficiency. Far from being a surrender of our sovereignty, a return to foreign rule, such an arrangement would in fact give Indian voters greater global choice in selecting their representatives. More choice means more democracy and more, not less, freedom. India could have a dream team of legislators which could include an Obama or a McCain (depends on who wins and who loses the US presidential race), a Clinton (Bill or Hillary, take your pick), and a Sarkozy (Carla, not Nicolas). As with all BPO operations, our new Parliament would be elsewhere, i.e. not in India. This alone would entail a huge cutting of costs in terms of ministerial housing. Currently, each mantriji’s Lutyens’ bungalow in New Delhi is valued at over Rs 150 crore. With ministers, along with other MPs, having been outsourced, all this super-prime real estate could be encashed to fund public coffers. The country would also save a vast amount of money on foreign junkets made by our parliamentarians. As all of our new IPL representatives would already be in foreign parts (from where they’d conduct our parliamentary proceedings via teleconferencing and the internet) all those expensive VIP (Visiting Indian Parliamentarian) trips abroad would be obviated. Our new VIPs — Videshi Indian Parliamentarians — would also not require the large-scale security bandobast that disrupts traffic for hours at a stretch and makes daily life a misery for the common citizen. With the IPL VIPs physically located far from New Delhi, the local police would no longer have VIP protection as their first — some would say their only — priority and perhaps could spend some time on preventing and solving crimes. There’s only one snag in the scheme. It’s a truism that all people get the government they deserve. What if our dysfunctional Parliament is nothing more — and nothing less — than a true reflection of the innate anarchy of our Indian ethos in which the rule book exists for one purpose only: that each and every rule in it be flouted, the more flagrantly the better? Would our videshi parliamentarians succumb to anarchy by association and become as unruly as the present lot? That’s the rub. As the old joke goes, when Lee Kuan Yew boasted that in two years he could turn Bihar into Singapore, Lalu responded that in two weeks he could turn Singapore into Bihar. He might have added: And in two days Bihar could turn Lee into a Lalu.