Jaswant Singh is not contemplating retirement from active politics and the RSS or anyone else isn’t working out a rehabilitation package for him, presumably he is doing some thinking and chintan of his own. And wondering what the options before him might be – he hasn’t had much experience in party hopping; having served the BJP for the last thirty years. The publicly extended invitation to him join the Samajwadi Party is one option of course , but one can’t really stomach the thought of the urbane and very proper Jaswant Singh to share television space with the likes of Amar Singh and his party. Just as an aide memoire, one of the Samajwadi Party’s objectives as outlined in its last election manifesto was to minimize the use of English(since an outright ban is not viable any more) and to bring back more babus who would then replace computers and other more efficient technology; ostensibly to create more jobs.
And that might be Jaswant’s biggest problem ; the educated and articulate don’t have much in the way of choices; given the fact that they have an image of integrity , consistency and honesty which they would not only like to protect but also live by. Typically, for instance , a man of Jaswant’s liberal and broad minded views would be best comfortable in the Congress. But for reasons best known to him, he c hose to join the BJP and stay on there for all these decades till his recent expulsion. We would expect a typical opportunist to cozy up to any party willing to now welcome him – as say as his erstwhile colleague Kalyan Singh has done by joining Mulayam’s Samajwadi Party. But while, one may have such expectations from Kalyan , most of Jaswant’s supporters, and needless to say the man himself in all probability would be mortified at the thought of kow towing to Mulayam or the Congress. And so Jaswant Singh finds himself an unattached independent member of parliament; which is not such a bad thing in itself, but for the fact that in our political landscape, there is little space for independent members.
One of the difficulties in our system is that there is little space available to the independent member who usually is forced to fade away into oblivion. Members of parliament , who are unattached to a political party have very little scope to play any meaningful role in shaping or influencing public policy or even speaking in parliament debates, no matter how outstanding a parliamentarian one might be. Witness the fate of Private Members Bills in parliament. Although in theory , parliament can take up for consideration and even enact legislation by discussing and then passing them, the fact is that Parliament passes very few private bills. According to constitutional expert Subhash Kashyap, only 14 private members’ bills have been passed in India so far.
The fact that the culture of independent politicians cannot often make any visible impact in the running and governance of the state usually keeps many meritorious people out of politics and parliament as several such people would not like to subvert their thinking and beliefs to the ideology of any particular party. Over the years, the country has failed to benefit from the experience and wisdom of many people ; because typically to enter parliament, contest elections and make one’s presence felt, one has to be aligned to one or the other political party. Even as look at reforms in several areas of our national life, we need to work at creating a role and promoting a culture where independent parliamentarians are given the opportunity to be part of nation building and law making without depending on the crutches of political parties of one hue or the other.
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