George Menezes

The trouble with our country is that Governments don’t fall often enough. The life of an ordinary citizen has become staid and boring. Of course the Sensex falls and fool-proof Police cases fall flat on their faces but a very small percentage of citizens are affected by these falls.

Even the fall of Sewag’s wicket, first ball from carrom player Mendis is not exciting enough. Despite Sonia we have learnt nothing from the Italians whose governments have a shorter life span than a balloon in the hands of rowdy kids.

This makes Governments arrogant. And the arrogance passes on to bureaucrats and to Corporation bosses. And, as we have seen, it flows over to economic indices that refuse to fall and others once fallen refuse to rise. Above all “arrogance” becomes the mantra of coalition partners, an adulterated version of Fevicol that holds things together with the arithmetic of numbers but takes no responsibility for governance.

And therefore governments must fall.

By upbringing I am a socialist. I inherited it from my father who bailed me out of prison when at the age of thirteen I had participated in the burning of Amergol Railway Station half way between Dharwad and Hubli.

We were asking the British to quit India. That was my first mistake.

Years later disillusioned with Jawaharlal Nehru’s socialism I started to hate the Congress Party. In the 60 years since independence no political party has had such large majorities in Parliament and in the State Assemblies and so many years of uninterrupted opportunity at governance.

Instead of slogans of “am aadmi” they could have utilized the industrial development and agricultural abundance of so many years to really transform the lives of the truly authentic Indians in our villages by providing them shelter, food, power, basic education, medical facilities, good roads and transportation.

They failed miserably on every count.

In my understanding, Parliamentary Democracy requires a system where two national parties compete for the national vote for the right to govern the country. It also envisages a system of checks and balances so that when one party fails to deliver it is replaced by the other.

India can be called the world’s largest democracy but then we are only talking of universal franchise involving millions and millions of people. The reality is that we are neither a parliamentary democracy nor are we a free people.

And so it came to pass that in a moment of blind anger and total frustration I accepted Mr.Vajpayee’s and Ram Jetmalani’s invitation to join the BJP as a member of its National Executive

That was my second mistake.

The BJP was handed the governance of the country on a silver platter and they soiled it by a concerted agenda of hate not only against minorities and dalits but against all freedom loving people from the majority community who opposed its fundamentalist agenda.

It blotted its copybook and had to return to the pavilion. I dislike it as much as I dislike the Congress party.

At the fag end of my life I started once again to lean to the left and hallucinate that my long lost friend George Fernandes and his ilk would iron their crumpled kurtas and iron out their differences and form a formidable Third Force of the Socialists, Leftists and Secularists and monitor the checks and balances of a parliamentary system of democracy.

That was my third mistake.

Alas this hope proved to be nothing more than a left-leaning tower of Pisa. A tourist attraction crumbling under the weight of its own contradictions

Regrettably, we do not, as of today, have the leadership in any political party that can live up to the aspirations of the people of India.

We only have leaders in all Parties that can mismanage a sickening circus of horse trading, criminality, corruption and a brazen disregard for morality and the needs of their countrymen. Even the clowns in this circus make me weep.

On 23rd of July however after BJP bribe takers tossed bundles of unaccounted money in the face of the Speaker and turned Parliament into a whore house Somnath Chatterjee the greatest Speaker of all times kept his calm, called for a Trust vote and the Congress and its opportunistic and self serving allies survived.

Generally speaking after the shameful conduct of our MPs and despite some excellent speeches no Party has won the confidence and Trust of the people India.

So let all the Parties fall so that the “am aadmi”, that is, you and me, can say “What a fall there was my countrymen, then you and I and all of us fell down and bloody treason flourished over us !!”

As we have seen all Mayawati’s horses and all Karat’s men cannot put Humpty Dumpty together in Third party coalition again.

The Indian Parliament has murdered. May be something good will emerge from the ashes of its cremation so that Indians can rise above their own dead selves to higher things.

The history of Civilization tells us that it has happened before and can happen again.