Support India Inc™s Advice to Mps

A destructive madness seems to have seized members of both houses of Parliament elected at great expense by the people, to represent the popular will in the framing and enactment of laws by which the country is governed. Despite urgent legislation relating to the acquisition and compensation of land for industrial and urban expansion, and the passage of a national Goods and Services Tax Bill to create a national market and avoid double taxation required to be debated and finalised, the entire monsoon session of Parliament was washed out. No business was transacted because of continuous agitation and rowdyism in both houses of Parliament. Although reduced to a tiny minority of less than 10 percent in the directly elected Lok Sabha (44 out of 543 members), the opposition Congress party refused to œlet the house function unless a Union minister and two state chief ministers ” leaders of the ruling BJP/NDA alliance at the Centre ” resigned their offices pending investigation of corruption charges. During the failed monsoon session, the country™s tax-paying citizens incurred a loss aggregating Rs.260 crore due to the intemperate and unruly parliamentary conduct of Congress MPs. Secondly, it also needs to be noted that during the rule of the Congress-led UPA II government (2009-14), BJP MPs indulging in similar disruptive behaviour wiped out not one, but several sessions of Parliament. This is the backdrop against which at the fag end of the nihilistic monsoon session, some 15,000 captains of industry and leaders in other walks of life including academia, made an online appeal to MPs cutting across party lines to allow Parliament to œfunction, debate and legislate. Curiously instead of prompting introspection, this perfectly sensible admonition and advice to the peoples™ representatives provoked vituperative reactions from some MPs, particularly of the Congress and the communist parties. In a threatening tone, Congress™ Manish Tewari warned India Inc against advising MPs how to manage the country. Likewise, CPM™s Sitaram Yechury advocated that captains of industry who signed the petition be taken to task. Such threats to India Inc are a hangover from the bad old days of licence-permit-quota raj when the Central and state governments ” and bully politicians ” could throw a spanner in the works of any company. Despite liberalisation, wide residuary powers have been retained by government to harass corporate India. Leaders of the BJP and Congress who have reduced Parliament to a theatre of the absurd need to become aware that India Inc, which produces the goods and services the public needs, has a legitimate right to protest when important legislation in the national interest is stymied because of juvenile politics practised in Parliament. In the circumstances, the India Inc petition to MPs to get their act together and cease and desist from committing contempt of Parliament should be welcomed and supported by all right-thinking members of society. Ban online porn in under-developed india The central government™s swift reversal of the ban imposed upon 857 pornographic websites in early August following a hue and…