Pavan Varma | Ignoring future of youth is business as usual for Parl

In the world’s largest democracy, its central shrine — the Parliament — is facing its worst crisis since Independence. The BJP, even if short of an absolute majority, functions as if nothing has changed after the mandate of 2024. And a strengthened and more strident Opposition is hell bent on settling past scores. The net result is an ugly impasse, in which no side is willing to cede ground.

Events were building up to this eventuality. When the UPA government was in power between 2004 and 2014, the BJP made disruption of the House into a fine art, and its leaders of the Lok Sabha, Sushma Swaraj, and of the Rajya Sabha, Arun Jaitley, even justified such disruption as part of democratic practice. When the BJP came to power in 2014, a diminished Opposition tried to emulate such disruptive tactics, but its numbers were small, and that of the BJP unassailable.

The cumulative impact is the unbearable public denigration of parliamentary proceedings we see now. The manner in which Prime Minister (PM) Modi’s speech was drowned out by the constant sloganeering and heckling of the Opposition, was deplorable, especially when the earlier debut speech of Rahul Gandhi as Leader of the Opposition was given a fair hearing. There are some aspects of parliamentary decorum that must prevail. Walking into the well of the House has to stop. The PM, when he speaks, must be listened to. If the Leader of the Opposition (LOP) requests to make a point during the speech, the PM should graciously yield. Any other rebuttals must be made after the speech. It cannot be the law of the jungle in a House which has in the past heard some of the most scintillatingly reasoned and cerebral debates.

In any case, the short point is that Parliament is paralyzed, and this raises serious doubts about its ability to respond to the real concerns of the people. To be relevant, Parliament must rise above its internecine battles to collectively tackle issues of urgent and national public importance. Parliamentary rules allow for this. The Lok Sabha has provision for a motion for an adjournment of the business of the House for the purposes of discussing a definite matter of urgent public importance with the consent of the Speaker. In the Rajya Sabha, a notice under Rule 267 to suspend listed business to discuss a national issue of importance exists. Why then did the Speaker and the Rajya Sabha chairman disallow the legitimate request of the Opposition to suspend the traditional — and mostly routine — debate on the Rashtrapati’s opening address to Parliament to discuss the devastating issue of the leakage of papers of the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (Neet), including the abject failures of the National Testing Agency (NTA)?

Some 24 lakh students gave the Neet exam this year, to somehow find a place in the highly limited number of vacancies available to study medicine. For this exam, students prepare for months, if not years. Many families sacrifice a great deal to ensure that their child gets the best coaching and other facilities to qualify. Nor are paper leaks a new phenomenon. In the last 10 years, several important exams that could provide employment to the growing army of our unemployed youth have been cancelled due to as many as 70 paper leaks. The future of some two crore students has been affected. The manifest inadequacies of the NTA to conduct a zero-error exam, is appalling.

Is not the tragically jeopardised future of our youth compromised by a faulty testing system a matter of “urgent public importance”? In my opinion it is, and the PM would have won the gratitude of the aspirants, if he himself would have proposed to immediately discuss this matter. But he did not do so, and when the Opposition did, both the presiding officers of the House turned it down.

Over 50 per cent of our population is under the age of 25, and 65 per cent below that of 35. We take pride in being demographically one of the youngest countries in the world. If Parliament had given due recognition to the exam crisis they are facing, and discussed it immediately, it would have boosted their faith in the democratic system.

In the last decade, we have witnessed the near complete inflexibility of the Treasury benches in accommodating the concerns of the Opposition, irrespective of the merits of the issue. The approach of the ruling party has been that we have the numbers, and we shall act as we wish to, while the Opposition can keep protesting. Given such an attitude, bills have been passed without adequate discussion or reference to select committees, and valid issues directly involving the pressing concerns of the people, have been dismissively brushed aside. This has naturally led the Opposition to protest. In the ensuing cacophony, both Houses have been adjourned when its members should have — as representatives of the people — been seriously discussing issues of urgent public importance.

The vital discussion on Neet, and the repeated paper leaks, fell a victim to this unfortunate syndrome. In my view, the presiding officers of both Houses should have agreed to accommodate this request of the Opposition. In the past, a similar request to urgently discuss the situation in the sensitive border state of Manipur, which has been in a state of civil war for over a year, and on which even RSS chief, Mohan Bhagwat, was constrained to make a critical comment directly indicting the Central government, was also turned down.

The question now before the ordinary citizen is: For how long can myopic parliamentary bitterness finesse the pressing concerns of the people? The future of millions of students is hanging in the balance, while parliamentarians continue to squabble. If Parliament refuses to give the plight of the young the priority it deserves, what faith will they have on its efficacy and responsiveness? A reasoned and constructive discussion in Parliament on how the examination malaise can be tackled, and the efficiency of the NTA improved, would have been the right thing to do.

Students caught in this unseemly political one-upmanship must be saying to themselves: “Apna wahi, jo waqt pe kaam aa gaya: Only they can be considered our own who in times of need are of help.”