It is a time-tested and proven fact that in a democracy where the opposition is less critical of the government in power, the quality of democracy itself takes a nosedive. It’s ironic that despite being the world’s largest democracy, India of today is staring at such a development. It’s not that there are any dearth of genuine issues which can be taken up to launch criticisms against the government. But the actualities are that they are not being pursued by the opposition in a manner befitting of the Indian democracy and an inexplicable lethargy is observable. However, after a long time a welcome break was witnessed on Thursday in parliament when Rahul Gandhi added ‘colours’ by launching a scathing attack against the Narendra Modi-led ruling NDA government. By now, it’s apparent that even though the tirade was delivered in a veiled manner, its effect has been telling and with it the political cut and thrust that has been missing from parliament made a return.

The Indian parliament has a long and glorious history where an unmistakable feature has been debates on issues having direct bearing on people. Being deep and insightful generally speaking and qualitatively superlative from the stalwarts, these speeches had not only enriched the parliament but the Indian democracy too. Over the years the graph has fallen and memorable pieces are only few and far between and an overwhelming presence of pandemonium in almost every session makes the proceedings less interesting. However, Thursday has been a remarkable day when a cocktail of wit and intelligence that came from Rahul Gandhi took the treasury benches almost off guard. His jibe which he said while speaking on the farm laws: “The country is run by four people- Hum doh, aur hamare doh," obviously contained no names, but was strong enough to make all understand about the identities of the persons it was implied for. The agitation spiked by the farm laws has rattled the national capital for more than two months and is showing every sign of snowballing into something more major. The opposition, composed of different parties including the Congress although is theoretically extending support to the movement, has so far mostly failed to orchestrate it in a way that would convince people that they do exist to point out the fault lines in government’s policies. But the Congress MP’s one-liner which had the sharpness of a razor as well as a high degree of innovation was a strategy that really clicked and made headlines across all national and many regional dailies also.

It’s high time the opposition pull up its socks like this to re-establish credibility among people. There is no shortage of pressing issues confronting the country. 

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Kenter Joya Riba

(Managing Editor)
      She is a graduate in Science with post graduation in Sociology from University of Pune. She has been in the media industry for nearly a decade. Before turning to print business, she has been associated with radio and television.
Email: kenterjoyaz@easternsentinel.in / editoreasternsentinel@gmail.com
Phone: 0360-2212313

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