This week, one of India?s topmost bureaucrats, the Indian ambassador to Washington DC, the articulate Ronen Sen was called in to explain to Indian Parliament whom he had referred to as ?headless chickens? in an interview to rediff.com. He appeared keen to come clean, and apparently insisted that he was a habitual user of the phrase ?headless chickens?.
This committee of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha members that can ?summon? bureaucrats, civil servants and other such higher ups is the Privileges Committee. The term has its origin in the belief that as representatives of the people, MPs enjoy certain ?privileges? above the common rights of citizens.
In fact, the notion of ?parliamentary privilege? is very old. It is derived from the British context in which Parliament was beginning to evolve in Westminster, which ran the risk of being run over if the Monarch, as the Sovereign, took his divine anointment too seriously and tried to muzzle the voice of the people. As happens in such circumstances, a committee was set up?in this case to guard this privilege. As a result, MPs were insulated from verbal barbs and the like from the Monarch and his men, who had to worry about committing a ?breach of privilege?, which was later made punishable. It was the 1689 Bill of Rights that conferred this privilege on English parliamentarians and parliamentary proceedings. Bullying or threatening an MP was no longer easy.
Of course, that was more than 300 years ago. Things have changed since. ?Breach of privilege? allegations are routine in India. It could be reports released by the government before being tabled in Parliament, it could be a loose remark aimed at a Parliamentarian. Or even worse, as in Ronen Sen?s case, an intemperate remark that classifies a whole group of parliamentarians as something that sounds flappably undignified, such as those opposing the Indo-US nuclear deal being akin to ?headless chickens?, a phrase that exercised MPs no end for days. Clarifications that it was journalists being referred to, not MPs, could not save Ronen Sen from being called to India to appear before the Privileges Committee.
Privilege, quite clearly, is not to be trifled with, and certainly not so mindlessly. Indian Parliament?s rules define privilege as follows??(it is) the sum of the peculiar rights enjoyed by each House collectively as a constituent part of Parliament and by members of each House individually, without which they could not discharge their functions, efficiently and effectively, and which exceed those possessed by other bodies or individuals. When any of these rights and immunities, both of the members, individually, and of the assembly in its collective capacity which are known by the general name of privileges, are disregarded or attacked by any individual or authority, the offence is called a breach of privilege, and is punishable under the law of Parliament.? Phew!
Article 105 in the Indian Constitution deals with ?privilege?, too, and empowers MPs with freedom from any proceedings in a court of law on any matter concerning any action of an MP vis-a-vis a vote, or a report or any other action that he/she may undertake in Parliament.
Observers of Indian politics may recall, and some with considerable agony, how it was a form of this ?parliamentary privilege? that gave MPs of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha and the then-ruling Congress party their immunity from the due process of law and scrutiny in the case involving allegations of bribery to save the Narasimha Rao government.
Parliamentary privileges have their reason, no doubt, and people?s representatives need some degree of insulation from powers and forces that threaten to disrupt what they do. But at what point do these privileges become a shield for the indefensible? The legitimacy of the provision has been eroded in public perception over the years by the blatant ways in which it has been misused. When the going gets tough, MPs invoke ?privilege? as a teflon coating. For how long can the people go along with this?