Parliament must reclaim its role

In normal times, giving the dead a dignified farewell is considered a sacred duty, and families go to great lengths, if necessary, to perform that duty. But the tsunami of deaths caused by Covid has provoked an unseemly reaction – abandonment, a fate usually reserved for the destitute. It’s not just the bodies floating in the Ganga in UP and Bihar, families are refusing to take dead bodies to perform the final rites across the country.

Meanwhile, the living are asking existential questions -- be it about the paucity of hospital beds, inadequate oxygen supply, extreme shortage of the promised vaccines, of jobs lost because of the lockdown, or the absence of food on the plates of the hungry millions. Those in power are busy spinning a narrative based on what a public intellectual recently described as the “idiot statistics of exponentialism.” A Truth Commission is sought to probe the multiple failures in containing the raging public health disaster and hold accountable those responsible for the gruesome mess in which we find ourselves.

But, must we add another layer to the dysfunctional mechanisms of accountability or should we find ways of prodding them back into action? Parliament is the first and foremost of such accountability-enforcing forums enshrined in our Constitution. Yet, it is the judiciary that is demanding answers from the administration everyday while our MPs are busy doing everything else but what they were elected to do -- to seek accountability from the government. This, despite the public outrage at not only the inadequacy of healthcare services but also the absence of information that is crucial for keeping body and soul together.

A stark contrast to such callousness here is the manner in which the US Congress and the federal government have responded to sustained public pressure on a topic of widespread debate but one that most of us would consider flippant. Come June, the US Department of Defense and intelligence agencies will present a detailed research report to Congress on “unidentified aerial phenomenon”, comprising of what folklore recognises as “UFOs” or “flying saucers.” This is mandated by the Consolidated Appropriations Act passed in December 2020 sanctioning a $2.3 trillion spend on a new Covid relief and stimulus package for Americans. Tucked away in the Act is a decree of the US Congress that the UFO report be submitted in an unclassified form -- in other words, accessible to all.

The CIA promptly opened up more than 2,700 pages of declassified records on UFOs in January. They reveal that more than 90% of UFO sightings are attributable to clouds, weather balloons, planets and meteors or sunlight reflecting off metallic surfaces or dismissible as outright hoaxes. However, a small number of cases simply cannot be explained and the threat they pose to national security, apparently, requires assessment. The instrumentalities of the State bowed to people’s demand to know the truth, as they must in a functional democracy.

Meanwhile, Indian authorities continue to treat vital information -- about vaccine purchase agreements with pharma companies, clinical trial data about new and repurposed Covid drugs, the manner of distribution of foreign medical supplies across India, and such other matters as sarkari secrets. For instance, we know very little about even the composition and the working of the many committees set up to advise the government on containing the pandemic.

Instead of merely rubber-stamping the ruling party’s legislative agenda and its budgetary demands, Parliament must reclaim its role as the forum for holding government accountable on behalf of the citizen, voter and taxpayer. Bi-partisan action is the need of the hour because the truth about the government’s record of handling the pandemic is out there. Teary eyes only blur the vision, they cannot make reality go away.