The new leader of the opposition (LoP) in the world’s largest democracy has managed to cultivate his ‘own moles’ in a government known for its utmost secrecy and shock-and-owe actions.
India’s Rahul Gandhi has done so much good for democracy and the Westminster System that the world’s most populous nation follows for legislative purposes despite having no immediate predecessor to emulate before the Congress party leader in the last 10 years.
“ED ‘insiders’ tell me a raid is being planned. “Waiting with open arms @dir_ed…..Chai and biscuits on me,” Gandhi wrote on his social media account in the wee hours of Aug 2. (Italics mine).
The current regime led by pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Narendra Modi is known for sending law enforcement agencies like the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the Central Bureau of Investigation to knock on the doors of opposition leaders and intellectuals at midnight.
The ED raided the houses of 47 journalists in New Delhi in the nation’s largest ever midnight raid on Oct. 3 last year. Despite being chief ministers under the Westminster System, Jharkhand’s Hemand Soren was picked up on Jan. 31 night and Delhi’s Aravind Kejariwal was rounded up at 9 p.m. on March 21.
Fearing the midnight knocks from the ED, Gandhi kept himself awake till 1.52 a.m. to share the ‘info’ passed on to him by his ‘insiders’ with Indians and other nations that follow the UK model of the parliamentary system.
The post of the LoP has been vacant in India for 10 years since no opposition party had won 10 percent or 55 of the 543 seats required to claim the post. Gandhi’s Congress emerged winners with 99 seats in India’s seven-phased polls whose results were declared on June 4. He was elected the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha on June 25.
As the LoP, Gandhi will be part of many high-profile panels headed by the prime minister to make key appointments.
This is for the first time Gandhi from the powerful Gandhi family in India is holding a constitutional post under the Westminster System since he joined politics in 2004.
The Westminster System gives the LoP the command over the lower house (Lok Sabha) to, by default, dismiss a government by “withholding (or blocking) supply” (rejecting a budget), passing a no-confidence motion, or defeating a confidence motion.
With his party yet to recover from the crushing defeats inflicted by Modi’s BJP in the two general elections in 2014 and 2019 what helped Gandhi break the secret veil of the Modi government?
Gandhi did walk a lot before India’s polls, starting April 19, and the 54-year-old leader thwarted Modi’s ‘secret dream’ of ruling democratic India like a monarch under the Westminister System.
Gandhi put one foot in front of another to complete a 4,080-kilometer-long walkathon across India on Jan. 29. In a globalized world of fast and easy travel, he moved at a snail’s pace to find answers to the urban decay of city dwellers and rural exploitation of the country flock.
When Gandhi decided to dust off his boots to feel the pulse of the nation, many laughed at his idea of walking as a means of getting to know people.
But by the time Gandhi reached Kashmir in India’s north from the bottom in the southern tip of Kanyakumari, Indians were charmed by his act of lending a patient ear to people.
When the Bharat Jodo Yatra (March for a United India) reached Kashmir after 146 days Gandhi turned into a bushy-bearded man from a clean-shaven youth.
The Indian subcontinent and many Asian nations are not short of hereditary ruling families like in the cases of the Gandhis in India, the Shariffs in Pakistan, the Rajapaksas in Sri Lanka, the Marcos family in the Philippines, the Hun Sen family in Cambodia, and the petrodollar monarchial families in the Middle East.
Children and grandchildren from these elite families are destined to be top leaders of their respective nations as in the case of Gandhi.
Humans are born to walk. As cave-dwellers we could burn more than 4,000 calories a day, most of it spent on walking. However, we humans are stuck currently with technology in hand which makes a false world real.
Neither is there a winner nor a loser at walking because walking is not a sport after all. Walking is, by its very nature, gives the walker enough room for silence.
In the planetary system, those species stuck in one place have proved inferior in intelligence and memory. The roots of vegetables, according to Aristotle, are their mouths which attach them to the ground.
Lampooned and derided Gandhi was once stuck in the middle of inaction and Indians were about to write him off. But walking cleared his path as he listened to the people, though reserved his solutions for another occasion.
The poor and the illiterate people outnumber the rich and educated persons in the world. They are dismayed at the swiftness of Big Capital that eventually reaches their doorsteps in the form of mega projects and round-the-clock services in a globalized world.
Banks are no longer the largest source of funds for a country from external sources. So people are not in a position to know the real motive behind a big-ticket investment project coming up in their neighborhood.
If the poor and the illiterate are confused, workers and employees in the world are perplexed as the means of production are getting concentrated in fewer hands (the 1 percent or even less than that).
All aspiring world leaders and heads of state should walk into the midst of their people to explain the rationale behind the onslaught of capital.
Will India’s LoP cobble together a shadow government like in the UK under the Westminster System next?
Joseph Benny is a journalist from Kerala
