Budget Session: BJP on the Front Foot

With the backdrop of the Rohith Vermula Suicide in Hyderabad and the JNU crisis, political cynics expected that the Budget Session 2016 of the Parliament was heading for another washout. But, if the first three days of its functioning is considered reflective, then it can be said that it is this session where the sheer magnitude of differences between our political parties and in a sense, the people they represent, was truly on display. In this post, I give a quick summary of the first three days of the ongoing parliament session.

The stage was set was another round of meaningless demonstrations and benign accusations by the opposition on the ruling Bhartiya Janata Party(BJP), given their mishandling of the JNU crisis and the suicide of a Dalit scholar in Hyderabad, purportedly at the behest of two union ministers. But thanks to explosive revelations by our feisty HRD minister, Smriti Irani; fiery speeches by the likes of Arun Jaitley & Anurag Thakur and some reports in the press, the BJP has managed to divert the attention from the agrarian crisis or the troubled Public Sector Banks and put the ball in Congress’s court to defend their support for the unruly students at JNU or their distortion of a report in the case of Ishrat Jahan, a woman who was killed in an alleged fake encounter in Gujarat back in 2004 but has now been confirmed as a terrorist who was sent to assassinate Narendra Modi, then the Chief Minister of Gujarat.

The Congress party sought to attack the BJP on the arrest and subsequent sedition charge of Kanhaiya Kumar, initiated by the speech of Jyotiraditya Scindia, a Congress MP, which frankly sounded like a collection of angry tweets by a loony liberal, echoing the same half-literate rants which dominate our media and intellectual space. He said that the BJP was trying to impose the Hindutva ideology on the country and how freedom of speech should be unrestricted, even if it celebrates a convicted terrorist. His speech was immediately rebutted by Anurag Thakur, a BJP MP, who attacked on Rahul Gandhi for supporting the students raising the anti-national slogans raised in the JNU campus and how the Congress resorted to political opportunism without understanding the seriousness of the issue. After a round of political blame games, it was the speech by Smriti Irani which exposed the bigotry and absurdity that grips the JNU Campus.

She inundated, with damning evidence, that in the garb of free speech, how students at JNU constantly celebrate the Maoists who vow for the destruction of India and the killings of Indian soldiers who lose their lives defending them, apart from their not-so-subtle demonstration demanding Kashmir’s succession from the Indian state on the much controversial night of February 9th, 2015. She also presented evidence on how the Congress party sanctioned school curriculums which had a clear prejudice against the Hindus, leaving our eminent parliamentarians completely speechless. On the next day, she continued her attack on the opposition, presenting evidence that Rohith Vermula was in fact not even a Dalit, confirmed here by the Telengana Police. She asserted that the political elite in the country had reduced him merely to a caste and exposed the irony that it was that very problem of being labelled as caste which drove him to commit suicide, as expressed by himself in his suicide note.

Due to her, it can be said that the BJP has managed to at least put forth a formidable defence against the controversies which have rattled the party in the last couple of months. Never has been the Left hegemony of Indian politics such fiercely challenged.

That being said, the troubles for BJP are far from over. They still do not have a majority in the upper house of parliament and the opposition is bent upon stalling important legislation, no matter what concessions BJP makes. The Prime Minister’s silence on key national controversies doesn’t help their cause either. If he is indeed serious about legislative business being conducted, he needs to shred his hatred for the Delhi media or their political patrons and lead from the front, tackling every issue heads on, just like the way his HRD minister has been doing for the past three days.

Also, the ruling party is clearly in the driving seat after a far-sighted Railway Budget was presented by Suresh Prabhu and a sobering yet optimistic Economic Survey was presented in the parliament by the Finance Minister, Arun Jaitley. If the government capitalizes on the work of the past two years by presenting a strong, innovative yet practical budget, it will silence all its critics and retain its glory, which some say has been fading at the back of declining exports, debt ridden Public Sector Banks and falling stock prices, thus bringing back the focus on investment and growth.

As of Friday(26th Feburary), the BJP has steered itself out of controversy but the real challenge would only be addressed on the 29th, when the Budget is presented in parliament. India is keenly waiting.