Consider a scenario. You are a body that has hired a bunch of people to do a particular job. That job could be cleaning the garbage, making out cheques, serving food, managing finance, anything. The person or persons does not turn up for work. Day after Day. What would you do?
The answer is obvious. Sack them. After all, why would I pay for someone who is of no use to me? It is perfect business logic. Anyone who has managed or run anything understands this.
So why is it, that we – the people of India – are so complacent when the people that we sent to Parliament, to represent our interests, don’t turn up for work? Day in and Day out. It has been almost 8 months since the current Government took over. The opposition NDA has been absent from Parliament for most of this time. And the boycott shows no sign of coming to an end. Where is the NDA when the role of the opposition has to be performed? There has been no hue and cry on vital security issues. A BSF officer gets brutalized and murdered in Bangladesh, and no sign of a squawk from the NDA. (mera bharat mahan, jai jawan. but i am sorry that i can’t demand justice on your behalf, because i am busy in an internal fatricidal war and a non issue that no one cares about) The FM imposes a 2% surcharge on cash withdrawals (now thankfully withdrawn) and there is pin drop silence from the NDA. The Patents Act is passed without too much murmuring. And, if i could be bothered to google this i could probably find a whole host of other decisions that the Government has been allowed to take without any debate. Such co-operation between the Government and the Opposition is not too condusive for Democracy. The opposition is meant to do a job, and the NDA is collectively not turning up to do it.
No business will pay a salary to an employee who doesn’t turn up to work at all. So why are we paying for half our Parliamentarians? In fact why are they still allowed to retain their seat. If they can’t deliver the job that they were elected for – and that means trashing out policy issues in Parliament and protecting our interests- maybe we should replace them with people who can.
Many Mumbai colleges have a strict 70% attendence requirement from their students. Without this students are not allowed to write exams. Maybe, we need something very similar applied to MP’s. No 70% attendence in Parliament, you lose your seat in 6 months, and the runner up gets the seat!
Bastrads should not be paid. o work; no pay.And the cash of rs. 50 millin that they gt every year to nurture their constiencies, must also be reduced.
And their phone bills. Best of all evict theserabid dogs from the free houses that they get.
Parliamentarians are not your employees. They are, in theory, negotiating on your behalf.
I look at the questions governing life as a continuum from one end, labeled “Economic Decisions” to the other end labeled “Political Decisions”.
The demands we all have are a finite set. The manner in which we classify them determine how much negotiation takes place. If a question is broadly understood to be an economic question, then it stays in the realm that politics does not need to address – which means people themselves decide on the answer.
For example – rare paintings. There is not enough demand to warrant a huge political decision about how the distribution should take place of these. The price system automatically adjusts it.
But on the other hand, electricity. The acrimony is unbelievable because everyone needs it, and also thinks that supply is limited andhence it’s a zero sum game. Since the assumption is that supply is limited, the best way to distribute it is by political negotiations. But if we all understood and acknowledged that it need not have a fixed supply, then it becomes an economic decision and we can afford to tell the politicians to shut up about it.. because we know that we’ll all get as much of it as we need, and probably at a price we are willing to pay, give or take a few percentage points.
Democracy is slow and messy because it’s the act of balancing the incredible variety of demands for resources by every single constituency that has even a decent shot at power.
Does this mean I think the UPA and NDA are just dandy? No, not so.
This acrimony is possible, and the MPs are able to justify it to their constituents come election time, (for example “.. I demanded free power 462 times in 38 speeches in Parliament on your behalf..”) , because the huge majority of the voters are not able to really see what is in their best interests. This is an enormous failure on the part of those people who are tasked with helping people understand their interests. (Journalists, economists and yes, the educated middle class.)
So, the solution is not to have no debates, but to make sure large numbers of common people are able to articulate what their true interests are. When that happens, there is far less negotiation because our interests in general are.. surprise !.. highly aligned to begin with. Then people will send the message to politicians to stay the fuck out of our way, and stop discussing ridicuous questions whose answers have already been settled by the market. That way politicians can concern themselves only with those questions whose answers cannot usually be determined by economic means. In my opinion there are only 3 such questions – national defence, foreign policy and enforcement of legal contracts.
All other questions are economic in nature.