Is Congress harming national interest?

The Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan may have withdrawn her remarks about the Congress being indifferent towards ‘National interest’ on the last day of the Winter Session of the Parliament on December 23, but to the people at large, the grandmotherly Sumitra Mahajan had made a valid point.

The virtual washing out of the session, except for the passage of the juvenile justice bill and a few others, was yet again a sign of the Congress's cussed tactics which have made it impervious to the infamy it is acquiring by its obstructionism.

The party has evidently convinced itself that it is motivated in its daily disruptions of parliamentary proceedings by the pursuit of worthy causes such as a union minister's insensitive remarks about dalits or the Arunachal Pradesh governor's allegedly unconstitutional conduct, not to mention the latest charges of dubious deals under Finance Minister Arun Jaitley's tutelage (till 2013) of the Delhi and District Cricket Association (DDCA).

But the widespread perception is that the Congress's sole objective is to stall the Narendra Modi government's economic reforms lest these pro-development measures fulfill his "sabka saath, sabka vikas" (together, we'll progress) plans and make the Congress sink deeper into the political mire.

Hence, parliament's failure to yet again approve of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) despite the prime minister's initiative to discuss the bill at his residence with Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh since the tax is regarded as a major pro-reforms step.

Tactics of this kind are also self-destructive, for they show the Congress, and especially its leaders, in a poor light because of the evident spitefulness of its acts. Of the leaders, Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi reveal themselves as being unable to decide how far they should take their obstructionism since it is obviously not something which can be carried on indefinitely, session after session.

At the moment, the mother-and-son duo may have succeeded in confining Modi to a corner, as in a chess game, where he is held virtually immobile. There is trouble in his party, too, as the DDCA affair has shown.

But, while a political opponent is allowed to take advantage of its adversary's difficulties, it is incumbent upon a 130-year party to act with responsibility, especially where the country's economic interests are concerned.

Since the Congress appears to be less interested in debates, both mother and son are giving the impression of being ill-tempered spoilers, who have been unable to digest their party's massive defeat in last year's general elections.

For the present, it is possible that the slight signs of recovery which the Congress has shown in Bihar and rural Gujarat have further emboldened the party's president and vice president by convincing them that they are on the right track.

If random television interviews with ordinary people are taken into account over the latest proposal to hike the salaries of MPs, nearly everyone believes in the "no work, no pay" principle.

If, on top of this, some of them are seen to be working against the national interest, popular faith in parliamentary politics will be difficult to sustain for long.

By Amulya Ganguli