Inside Parliament: Views from the Front Row

By Derek O'Brien

Derek O'Brien dominated Indian television as the country's most well-known quizmaster for over two decades, asking questions to millions across India. Now he plays a key role in the Rajya Sabha raising important questions from the front row in the Upper House. One of the most candid, courageous voices of the Opposition, O'Brien is articulate, incisive and provocative - qualities that are apparent in his writing. In this book, comprising his best political essays, Derek O'Brien reflects on the state of the nation, offering insights from a unique vantage point -inside Parliament. Never afraid of controversy or contention, he covers topics ranging from federalism, the Constitution and the note ban to the much-debated GST bill, social media and the lessons he's learnt as MP. Thought-provoking and captivating at once, Inside Parliament is required reading for all interested in understanding today's India and all who care about its future.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Nov 24, 2017
• ISBN: 9789352773824

Derek O'Brien

Derek O'Brien is a twice-serving member of the Rajya Sabha from Bengal, representing the Trinamool Congress. He is national secretary and chief national spokesperson of his political party, as well as leader of the Trinamool Congress' parliamentary party in the Upper House. O'Brien has spoken at, among others, Harvard, Yale and Columbia Universities in the US, and several IIMs, IITs and other premier educational institutions in India.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

After six years as a member of Parliament and close to fifteen years in politics, I felt it was time to put down my thoughts and ideas, my political interventions and policy suggestions, in a book. I’m not an expert on every subject under the Delhi sun—other than news television anchors, nobody is. Yet, as the leader of my party in the Rajya Sabha, and chief national spokesperson of the All India Trinamool Congress, I have endeavoured to keep abreast of current policy debates and concerns. I have tried to either study them or meet people with keen and often differing insights.

Sometimes, one’s policy position is instinctive and logical. It flows from one’s own—or the party’s—philosophy and innate sense of right and wrong, fair and unfair. On other occasions, the policy position arrived at is the product of intense investigation and inquiry. A serious parliamentarian or politician intending to make a mark in a policy debate—within his or her party, in Parliament or in wider public life—needs to do as much homework as a diligent student.

That is why I have often referred to the calling of politics—and it is a calling, not a ‘profession’ or a ‘job’—as a lifelong university. You never graduate; you are constantly learning, if you choose to.

Parliament has been both a university and a sacred shrine—a shrine to the ideals of our Constitution. It is these ideals of the Constitution that have allowed me, the member of a small minority community, to enter Parliament and contribute there. Not too many countries and political systems allow their citizens such a right.

To me, this Constitution speaks for our shared existence—one that allowed a Christian boy to grow up in a predominantly Hindu neighbourhood in Calcutta, on a road named after a Muslim, with Parsis, Sikhs and Jews as close friends. I am not unique. Millions in India share my privilege. The Constitution ensures that for us, and Parliament is an embodiment of the Constitution and its foundational principles.

This book is a collection of essays on various themes that have exercised me in my political career and in my attempts to contribute to the shaping of public debate and policymaking. It is also a catalogue of my first term in Parliament. All the themes of the essays have, in some form or another, been the focus of hectic contestation and argument in recent times. In that sense, this is a book on contemporary subjects of political and policy interest. No doubt there are other topics too that fit that definition, but the ones here happen to be those that I have embraced more strongly than others.

There are forty-six essays in this collection. They fall under five broad categories and I would like to explain how I came to choose them. That process of selection is important for me—and, I hope, for my reader—because it says a lot about who I am as an individual, as a public figure and as a politician. In a sense, these five categories open a window to me as much as, I believe, a window to today’s India.

The first , ‘Parliamentary Affairs’, comprises my observations, lessons and learnings from my six years in Parliament.

I slipped in as a backbencher and, gradually and pertinaciously, made it to the first row. I remember my first day and my first question—a supplementary question asked on the spur of the moment to then Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister Kapil Sibal, on whether the government had statistical data on how much foreign exchange Indian students were remitting for higher education overseas. It was a question very close to my heart—my father and grandfather were both educationists, and my professional association with schools and colleges has been a long one.

Yet it was not as if I had planned to ask it. It was while listening to the minister’s answer to another question that this point struck me and I put up my hand without thinking. The chair probably noticed a new face and decided to give me a chance. And so it began.

I have imbibed a lot in Parliament. The tactics of day-to-day management and the strategy of achieving a long-term legislative objective; preparing for a debate or even an effective intervention; watching a riveting exchange between Arun Jaitley and P. Chidambaram, two seasoned debaters and, to my mind, among the most accomplished parliamentarians in any democracy; the role of the Upper House in our constitutional framework—all these find mention in this section.

The second is ‘The State of the Nation’. It covers a range of political events, episodes and currents, each of which speaks of a pressing and ongoing problem. From the situation in the Kashmir Valley and the challenge of the Internet in the context of the turbulence there to the hollowness of Union government policy on women’s issues; from the politics of religious and caste supremacism—on both of which I have extremely strong views—to how India’s spirit of pluralism is slowly being eroded. I expect this is the section that will get me the most ‘likes’ as well the most ‘dislikes’.

Section three is ‘Saying It Like It Is’. The eleven essays here are straight from the heart. They flow from my personal and, in some cases, pre-political experience, including with the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI[M]) in Bengal. I explain my aversion to bans, especially on food and speech. I speak of the so-called ‘national media’, which, I’ve long felt—and this is a belief confirmed after six years in the Rajya Sabha—is incapable of understanding reality beyond central and south Delhi. And maybe the tony parts of Gurgaon and Noida.

The fourth section is ‘The Economics of It’. For the most part, this is a critique of the economic policies followed by the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government. There is a series of essays on demonetization and its aftermath. It gives me no happiness to say that we in the Trinamool had anticipated that it would be a fiasco, and I delineate why the negative impact of a hare-brained scheme will haunt the country for years to come. Demonetization was a scandal. That is the only way to describe it.

I’m more optimistic on the Goods and Services Tax (GST), despite serious quibbles about its hasty roll-out by the NDA government. On the obsession with foreign investment, I am equally critical of the NDA government and, on occasion, of its predecessor, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government. They often have the same lazy approach and even borrow each other’s language and excuses. However, some of the economic policies they have imported to and imposed on India simply do not suit our society and our people. Failure is written into them.

The final section is ‘The Greater Common Good’. Even if I were to put it myself, the ten essays in this section attempt to go beyond political differences and identify solutions to specific problems—urban governance, where a Calcutta and a Mumbai, for example, can borrow from each other’s best practices; or seeking to build a consensus on priorities for the Indian Railways, an institution I have been involved with in my capacity as a legislator and political administrator, and one that several generations of my mother’s family served with affection and distinction.

In this section, there is a chapter that I wrote with more emotion and feeling than usual—‘A True Leader Forgets No One’. This is my recollection of more than a dozen years of working with Mamata Banerjee, founder and leader of the Trinamool Congress and chief minister of Bengal, and the person who has taught me almost everything I know in politics. She has mastered, and has tried to teach my colleagues and me, the big picture of politics. But her key strength, as I point out, is in never forgetting the details and the people that make up the Trinamool ecosystem and our political family.

All in all, this is what politics is really about—a happy mix of people and ideas, of managing hope and harnessing energy, of the right balance of the brain and the heart. There is no point in having ideas without factoring in the human quotient. Equally, there is no point in being in politics and talking of mass welfare without honing and thinking through the ideas that are needed to pursue such goals.

This book is an honest attempt to create the right synthesis. I trust you will enjoy it. Irrespective of whether you agree or disagree with a specific essay and the position it takes, I would urge you to engage with the underlying ideas in the right spirit. Our democracy deserves that discourse.

Written into the invisible watermark of the pages of this book is an exploration of the campaign for 2019. It is clear to me that the NDA government has betrayed its mandate of 2014. People are asking questions about both intent and delivery. In my view, demonetization has been a turning point. Citizens were patient because they believed the prime minister and thought he had a plan to unearth black money and seriously tackle corruption. They are feeling let down.

Yet, since demonetization was such a massive exercise, with such deep and diverse implications, it cannot be dismissed as just another political failure. It has led to many types of stakeholders—from ordinary farmers to fat-cat bankers, from political workers to economic pundits—asking whether the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government is mature and astute enough to think through the longer-term impact of its policy decisions, or whether these are impetuous and spur-of-the-moment gimmicks.

These were doubts that not many were willing to listen to in the winter of 2016. They have a large number of takers today. Now, a backlash is building to the three-and-a-half wasted years.

For me, the demonetization episode was instructive in other ways too. It became clear that the Congress was still in shock after its humiliating defeat in 2014. It was too timid when it came to responding to the BJP’s bluster and boastful claims. Frankly, it was overawed in the early days following demonetization and only reluctantly joined other opposition parties, such as the Trinamool, in their protests.

When it came to parliamentary interventions, the Congress’s internal politics became obvious. Senior and seasoned Congress functionaries played their own games. P. Chidambaram, despite being an articulate and knowledgeable voice on economic issues, was kept out or stayed out of the parliamentary debates. At a time when we were trying to pin down the government, all this was frustrating.

Thankfully, after Rahul Gandhi’s town-hall-style meetings in US universities and the big controversy involving the son of the national BJP president, there is a distinct spring in the Congress’s step.

From Jai Ho to Jay Woe, the BJP’s narrative is gradually crumbling. In 2014, taking on a beleaguered and scandal-ridden UPA government, it optimized the anti-corruption mood and exploited popular anger. It realized that people were fed up of corruption and continued to milk that sentiment. As such, in the next three years it presented itself, using heavy-duty propaganda tools, as the sole representative of clean politics and governance and painted everybody else as corrupt. Government agencies as well as other agencies were mercilessly and shamelessly used to manufacture cases and level false allegations against political rivals. Some of these allegations appeared before key state elections, where the BJP was facing an uphill battle, and then quietly died down after the voting.

Now, after the BJP president’s ‘son stroke’ and the revelation that Acche Din and windfall gains seem to have come only for one company, the so-called anti-corruption rhetoric is struggling. Nobody buys it anymore. It is being laughed at and mocked. More than voters’ hate, megalomaniacal regimes should fear voters’ jibes. The NDA government has crossed that critical point. It is being laughed out of government.

The false rhetoric built around a ten-letter word—corruption—is increasingly being questioned. It is for the opposition to set the frame right by building an alternative narrative around another ten-letter word: competence. And on this, the BJP can’t win.

I believe the BJP and Narendra Modi can be stopped in 2019. How can this be done? We need to make a realistic assessment of national alternatives to the BJP, as well as regional opportunities and challenges for the BJP, and then strategize.

In the past year, the experiment of aligning with the Congress has not really worked for a big regional party like the Samajwadi Party (SP) in Uttar Pradesh. In Bihar, Nitish Kumar has joined hands with the BJP. So be it. On the other hand, the crumbling of the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) and the strengthening of M.K. Stalin and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) in Tamil Nadu has boosted the opposition. I will stick my neck out and predict a DMK sweep in the next general elections. As for Bengal, it will only be a battle for who will come second or third.

So, what next? In the run-up to 2019, I offer a three-step approach.

First, don’t make this a national contest between Narendra Modi and a single alternative candidate. This plays into the BJP’s hands. Rather, make this a national election that is a sum of state elections. Make Modi and the BJP fight twenty-nine different regional elections in the idiom and language and with the issues and themes of the individual states. Don’t let the BJP make it a contest around polarizing issues—beef, pseudo-nationalism or some such prime-time, made-for-TV-and-Twitter agenda.

Second, consider where the BJP juggernaut was stopped in 2014—in Bengal by Mamata Banerjee, in Odisha by Naveen Patnaik, in Tamil Nadu by Jayalalithaa. Consider where the Indian National Congress has beaten the BJP in recent times—in Punjab, led by the captain of the state, Amarinder Singh. Consider where the Congress is most