PM's address to the MPs : Mind your behaviour
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: May 15, 2012 -

For fear of breach of privilege of Parliament or Assembly, we will stop short of calling it amusing, but the paradox is clear and rings out loud.

For a country where Parliamentarians and Legislators guard the 'Privilege of the House' with such devotion sometimes bordering on paranoia, the Prime Minister's address to the Parliamentarians to mark the 60th year of the Parliament offered a refreshingly paradoxical situation in which the august House finds itself in today.

It was an explicit statement on the conduct and behaviour of the people's representatives inside the sanctum sanctorum of Parliament and this in a country where the Privilege of the House is guarded so zealously by its members and the irony becomes all that more palpable.

The Prime Minister's speech focused on Parliament, but it could have been an address to any of the Assemblies of the 28 States of India.

And so it stands that while the public are often told and warned about breaching the privilege of the House, it has been more a case of the members violating the sanctity of the House with their frequent disruptions, heated arguments which score high on the decibel scale but extremely low in substance and common sense and sometimes even fisticuffs which would put to shame even the local goons.

Certainly food for thought. As a man who made it to the first Lok Sabha in 1952 and is still there today as a member of the Rajya Sabha, Mr Rishang Keishing must surely know what he was talking about when he recalled the decorum maintained by the Parliamentarians and the 'healthy Parliamentary tradition earlier when members of the Treasury and the Opposition respected each other.'

The profundity of the observation from the veteran leader will not be lost on the people who understand the finer nuances of decorum and respect for each other. Respect for each other inside the Parliament or Assembly goes beyond the mere understanding of respecting each other as members of the august House, but respecting the area or Constituency which each represent.

And at no point of time is this respect for each other more significant and important than the present, when the ugly head of racism or racial profiling has been hogging prime time and prime space in the media, electronic and print.

When lung power is increasingly seen as the barometer to make one's presence felt inside the sanctum sanctorum of the august House, then it says something very significant about the way in which issues of importance to the people and the land are discussed and debated by the Parliamentarians or Legislators, whichever the case maybe.

The Prime Minister's speech or address to the members of Parliament was something of a report card on their conduct and behaviour inside the House and there is nothing to gloss over this.

Meaningful debates have given way to demonstrating lung power on many occasions. Supplementing a statement or a discussion has now become something more like a show of one upmanship or plain shouting down the other/s.

As noted, the Prime Minister's speech could have been addressed to any of the State Assemblies of the country, including Manipur.

When was the last time that the State Assembly witnessed any thought provoking or substantiated debates on matter of importance to the people and the State ?

When was the last time that the pitiable power situation in the State was debated with the thoroughness it required ?

When has any debate been raised over the conduct of the men in khakis inside the Assembly ?

It is time to reflect on some of the points the Prime Minister raised during his address to the Parliamentarians.

No doubt the State Assembly has demonstrated more than once where they stand when it came to crucial matters like protecting the territorial integrity of Manipur thereby sending out a signal of their collective resolve to the people and the Nation. But such occasions border more on the realm of the rare.

The primary onus of upholding the dignity and sanctity of an institution like the Parliament and the State Assemblies should naturally fall on the people who have made it to the august House and only then will the true essence and meaning of the Privilege of the House have any substantial significance.