By Birbal Jha
It was the 135th birth anniversary of the first president of India Dr Rajendra Prasad, 3rd of December, 2019 when for the first time as a citizen of the country I had the privilege to visit the Parliament to see how it looks and functions at first hand.
On a recommendation, I was able to get a pass to enter the highest lawmaking body of democracy in the country. The timing was from 2 PM to 2:40 PM well mentioned on the slip of the pass I had obtained from the counter. Accordingly, accompanied by my litterateur classmate Ajay Anurag I reached the destination much in advance with full of curiosity and alacrity.
Passing through the multiple security checks in adherence to norms in place, I was able to get seat on the bench, on the upper floor from where I could see the Hon’ble MPs speaking with my naked eyes. So nice so good! I was ushered to the seat by the lady staffer mostly using sign language.
The moment I entered, I found and heard Mrs Muthuvel Karunanidhi Kanimozhi, MP representing Thoothukudi constituency speaking in the House. One by one, I could hear half a dozen of Hon’ble members reading their papers within the specific time limit. Good was that these MPs were raising developmental issues pertaining to their respective constituency. BJP MP Ravi Kishan drew the attention towards the extension of UPSC at his constituency.
In between instructions for the MPs were often repeated on part of Hon’ble speaker to stick to the text submitted to the chair in advance for the august purpose.
The medium of communications was either English or Hindi. I could notice the leaders from the cow belt chose to use Hindi whereas those from south preferred English.
However, MP Nishikant Dubey from Jharkhand representing Deoghar (Godda) had submitted his paper in English but spoke in Hindi with permission granted under current system. He wanted the DRDO extension in his constituency.
In between I got reminded of my college time as back as 30 years ago. One of the professors perhaps to win hearts and minds of the students announced in the class that he would be dictating a set of eleven questions; out of them the five were sure to tally with.
Interestingly, in question battery of the examinations, there used to be a set of 10 questions and only 5 were needed to be answered to score the marks.
The teacher’s claim was often correct with past records which I had heard the seniors speaking so. Most of the students were contented and happy. The flipside was that the classroom was almost empty with a thin attendance. They only waited for the day to get ‘guess questions’.
It stands to reason why I got reminded of my college time. I saw the lower house of parliament almost half of the seats unoccupied, the reasons best known to the absenting MPs. I can say I saw the House of Representatives without representatives.
Sessions of parliament are generally conducted for limited number of days in a year. Even for such a small period, the house often goes without full attendance. Given that their absence does not affect their salaries, allowances and other benefits including a pension.
This is what I observed in my maiden visit to the parliament. Hats off to the security personnel who work very diligently, keeping us safe including members of parliament! Can’t we have one card system in place of multiple cards as mentioned above in the country? Carrying all of them at times is cumbersome and they can sync into one.
Dr Birbal Jha is an author and the Founder of British Lingua
