PARLIAMENT AGAIN

Parliament starts its delayed Monsoon Session today for a fortnight’s deliberations and for conduct of important business. The last session ended right when Covid came calling, and life was brought to a standstill. Covid-induced social distancing norms stopped a recall of the Parliament for its monsoon session, but better late than never. The proceedings will be limited to a fortnight, and urgent matters and bills are bound to come up for discussions and passage.

The government is bound to face a tough time, as its failures on several fronts are exercising the minds of the people and the Opposition. The government faced the Covid scenario with grit and determination in the beginning, and the total lockdown began from March 25. Things looked like being under control for the first couple of months, but the scenario is worse today. India is edging close to the top position in the world in Covid spread, though the figure of deaths so far is very high. With the daily infection rate touching a lakh or so, the pandemic seems unstoppable unless an effective vaccine appears on the scene.

While everyone lent their shoulders for the migrant labour to fall on and cry when they made a clamour for immediate return to their native states from the urban sprawls in Mumbai, Delhi etc, the government facilitated their travel by special trains. They took with them the virus, and the result is the present uncontrollable scenario. China with tough measures claims to have controlled the virus spread, and its total number of infections is in the range of over 85,000 while India’s daily infection rate is much higher than this number. State governments now need to act responsibly. The Centre should now explain why the scenario worsened.

In this parliament session, the government will sweat it out to answer why the national economy is facing such adverse odds, the growth having fallen into negative territory. Public sector banks are in a state of collapse, and steps like merger alone will not save them from doom. The government has not been able to set right the bad loans problem, which act like a canker on the banking system. The six years of the Modi rule could not do much to reverse the trend. Corruption, rather, is not limited to one sector. The entire system is getting corrupted and the government is throwing its hands up, rather than taking effective steps to check maladies like these.

Doing away with Question Hour by itself will not save the government from embarrassment during this session. The opposition must pin the government down on all major issues that directly affect people across India in this limited span of two weeks.