I will shoot the next person who says Jokepal

The day Lalu Prasad Yadav is the voice of reason is the day democracy needs to take a long shower.

On Thursday, in his inimitable style, Lalu asked Parliament not to rush ahead with passing the Lokpal Bill, saying that the country cannot be ruled by a bureaucrat, a former police officer, two lawyers and a social activist. He called for reasoned debate and for the views of every member of India's Parliament to be taken into account. This radical position caused the nation's media to bestow upon him the honour of newsmaker of the day, with interviews and shouting matches (‘moderated’, of course, by news media's resident backpfeifengesicht, Arnab Goswami) on his and other speeches in the Lok Sabha. I am willing to wager my moustache that at least one major newspaper on Friday will contain a list of zingers that “left Parliament in splits.”

The problem, however, was that each of these mentions did not care so much for the fact that a veteran MP asked for greater debate on a marquee legislation that is currently scheduled to be passed by both houses in 48 hours, but that he was in favour of reservations for minorities – minorities, mind you, not Muslims – or that he was scared of a Lokpal or that he had said bad things about Annaji and Annaji would campaign against him in future elections. People called him irrelevant and non-serious and a buffoon, drinking the Kool-Aid (or the RSS equivalent, Gau-Mutra) of meritocracy and sab-neta-chor-hain that Team Anna and whoever is riding that bandwagon this week are feeding them.

At the centre of the media’s – and by extension, the people’s – ire was the fact that Lalu is pissed at the fact that the Lokpal will not have a quota within a quota for backward minorities, despite the fact that other bodies like the Supreme Court and the Election Commission have no reservations (with, of course, the condescending mentions of SY Quraishi and JM Lyngdoh, who overcame their racial handicaps and St Stephen’s educations to become perfectly good chief election commissioners).

Amazingly, the anger – and there was considerable – at the R-Word coming anywhere close to the hallowed office of Lokpal was matched if not exceeded by the fact that it was coming in the way of smooth passage of the bill. Charges were made that the whole thing was just a stunt before the UP elections, which is probably true, but that is another matter. The very fact that such a thing could be even mentioned, let alone debated, was alternately called sacrilege or Machiavellian or plain ol’ dumb.

The fact remains, however, that the issue is worth at least some debate. All parties have agreed to reservations for backward classes in the Lokpal, and Muslims in particular have some legitimate concerns about Dalit converts not getting the same affirmative action they would have enjoyed had they stayed Hindus. It's a murky, complicated issue that is being debated at various fora. The Lokpal Bill, though not central to this debate, is by no means beyond the bounds of that debate. It is a quota within an existing quota, after all. In fact, I would be intrigued to watch Parliament debate the very existence of a quota in the Lokpal. My point is that there are a gazillion issues to be considered before passing the Lokpal, and two days of debate is not nearly enough time to do so. And railroading this bill through Parliament is not going to do anybody any favours. Pranab Mukherjee says that this bill has been discussed over most of the year, and thus MPs are in a good enough position to vote on it. But the special sitting of Parliament next week – Kerala and north-eastern MPs be damned – is going to be the first time this version of the bill is going to be debated in Parliament.

Then again, why this hurry? Because otherwise Annaji will protest. But Annaji is going to protest anyway, as long as he doesn’t get his bill. It makes sense to actually talk this out in Parliament, work out a bill that is at least what all of Parliament wants. You know, so that you can actually back up all that rhetoric about the supremacy of Parliament. More than just a photo-op of Parliament working while Anna protests, robust debate on the current draft should yield a number of amendments that would address many concerns and – hopefully – significantly improve the bill. History has shown that Parliament can be surprisingly coherent when it wants to. Next week, it has its entire raison d’être on the line: if Parliament succumbs to the stereotype perpetuated by Team Anna and discards nuanced debate for grandstanding and cynical ploys, not only will the reputation of the legislature be irreparably tarnished, but its very existence will be that much harder to justify. No pressure.

Maybe one of Lalu’s suggestions should be taken just this once: let all the parties release their members from their whips and let them vote according to their conscience.