The basic structure

BJP members disrupt proceedings in the Lok Sabha on the issue of rising prices of essential commodities, in 2010. - PTI

The government and the opposition together must take responsibility for the country's growth and preserve the structure of the Constitution.

LOOKING at the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government's troubled second term, what seems to be a significant difference from its first term is the attitude of the two major parties or groups, the UPA and the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), to the institutions that have made India a functioning democracy. In India, we do not know what constructive criticism means, and we can accept that as an attribute of Indian democracy. Opposition means opposition, total and unrelenting. One side opposes; the other side replies in kind. Neither listens. Well, it is the way we are.

But the criticism by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), its antics in Parliament, and its various postures in the public domain leave one a little curious. A good deal of it is justified, given the scams that have come tumbling out of various grotty cupboards, with the promise of more to come as time goes on. And then there has been the orchestrated confrontation between Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee and Home Minister P. Chidambaram. But nonetheless, the BJP's reactions have been slightly curious.

Curious because it has been so over the top. There is a shrillness in its opposition, its criticism; the biblical rending of garments has been performed over and over again. Not allowing Parliament to function is now so much a part of opposition strategy as to have becom almost formal parliamentary practice; it is not just the BJP which does it, though; the Congress did just that when the NDA was in power.

But what, one would like to ask both parties, does it do to Parliament as an institution? They know the answers, which is the alarming part. They know and they do not really care. But people in general must necessarily be worried, even frightened. It is one of those institutions that have made India the democracy it is, giving the lie to those who foretold its destruction within years of becoming independent. Stalling it, making it into an arena for shouting and screaming, can only weaken it and therefore the fabric of India's democratic nature.

This is one part of the issue. Another is what the Central government and State governments are doing to the other institutions that make the country work. Consider the manifest idiocy of trying to appoint someone as Central Vigilance Commissioner even when one of the members of the three- member selection committee objected to the appointment on the valid ground that there was something questionable in the official's record or that he was chosen when two other candidates with absolutely spotless records were available. But the ruling party persisted, even got the President's signature to his selection, and then had to face the ignominy of having the appointment set aside by the Supreme Court and being sharply rebuked by that court for what the government had tried to do. Did the government not know that such an appointment would, had it stood, have weakened an institution that clears the highest functionaries for appointment? The answer again is, of course, it knew. But it just did not care.

And it is not just the Central government. The Gujarat government has had an Indian Police Service (IPS) officer arrested, one who has publicly accused the Chief Minister of issuing directions to the police to look the other way when the anti-Muslim pogrom of 2002 engulfed the State; the arrest was made on some laughably stupid grounds. Did the government not know what the grounds looked like to everybody? Again the answer is it certainly did, but again, it simply did not care. So, an all-India service officer is put in jail, making that service less effective in the State.

The other element that has come into the public exchanges between the BJP and the government spokesmen is the descent into acrimonious name-calling. The number of times that the BJP has called the Prime Minister incapable of action, incompetent, powerless, and so on, has increased remarkably, and this was something started, if one remembers correctly, by no less than senior BJP leader L.K. Advani himself.

It is not that one cannot call the Prime Minister incompetent or powerless. In a democracy one can, if one wants to. All one is saying is that descriptions of that sort could, perhaps, be limited to specific instances instead of being added to all references to him. This is one of the things that seem curious, though the reason for their repeatedly saying that Manmohan Singh is incompetent is to point, indirectly, to the fact that the real power is with Congress president Sonia Gandhi, not with the Prime Minister. While we all know that, it is the frequency with which this is declared by all leaders and members of the BJP that seems odd.

One needs only to look at the attitude and behaviour of another NDA constituent, the Janata Dal(U). Has one heard Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar ever say anything offensive or crude about the Congress? He has criticised the UPA often enough, and his criticism has been at times pretty strong. But it has always been within certain unspoken limits.

It would be easy to say that this is because he knows what it is to run a State, the difficulties in the way of taking urgent decisions, the crises that a Chief Minister has to face time and again. It would be easy to say this, but then one has to marvel at the fact that no less than six States are run by the BJP, that the Chief Ministers of these States would certainly be sharing their problems and difficulties with the Central leadership, and would in fact be in touch with Ministers in the UPA government, and yet the strident tone of the BJP's national leadership does not change, more curiously, that of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, whom the party fancies as a future national leader.

Is it because there are so many instances of corruption emerging from the UPA's cupboards? That argument will not really hold any water because for one thing the scams involve, mainly, the Congress' allies the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and, recently, the Nationalist Congress Party, which pressured the government to take the extraordinary decision to lift the ban on the export of onions when food prices were rising. The 2010 Commonwealth Games scam is undoubtedly something that involves the Congress because the former games Organising Committee chairman Suresh Kalmadi is a Congress MP, but he has been put in jail. What, then, about the brazen behaviour of the former Chief Minister of Karnataka, a BJP stalwart, about which there has not been a squeak from any of the BJP's leaders? The short answer is that no party can claim to be, what we say in Bengali, washed tulsi leaves.

But the weakening of institutions goes on unabated, inspired, perhaps by the behaviour of MPs in Parliament and MLAs in State Assemblies who have thrown mikes, chairs and even pedestal fans at each other and at the Speakers. Chief Ministers use transfers as punishment, often moving officers two weeks after they join a particular post. It is very unlikely that these Chief Ministers ever stop to think of what the cumulative effect of all these transfers has on the administrative machinery.

One can, in this context, understand the kind of movement that social activist Anna Hazare has started, although it looks as if it will end up as another political party with its own agenda. But one can see what angers him because many ordinary people are angered by the same things. Nevertheless, even he needs to look beyond corruption, at the process by which the country is being weakened until it reaches a stage where it will, as many self-proclaimed prophets said in 1947, disintegrate into small pieces and collectively sink into greater poverty and misery.

Is it so difficult for governments and opposition parties to realise that both have to shoulder a tremendous responsibility if the country is to grow or, more basically, stay together? The Keshavananda Bharati judgment by the Supreme Court laid down that the basic structure of the Constitution cannot be altered by Parliament. Apart from that is it not clear that there is a basic structure that keeps the country together, and that ought not to be altered?