Surrounded by gaggles of people, Narendra Modi paused on the steps of the Parliament, bowed before it and touched the first step with his h...
Surrounded by gaggles of people, Narendra Modi paused on the steps of the Parliament, bowed before it and touched the first step with his head. No prime minister had made the kind of faithful gesture that Modi did on his maiden visit to the Parliament on May 20, 2014 – it was ostensibly a public display of his respect for the highest representative body even before he assumed the office of the prime minister.
His government since then has made many shows of its regard for the apex legislature of our nation. It relentlessly talked about minimum government and maximum governance, started celebrating Constitution Day on November 26, and attempted to appropriate BR Ambedkar, the chairman of the Drafting Committee of the Constituent Assembly. While laying the foundation stone of the new Parliament building last December, Modi eloquently talked about India’s vibrant democracy and hoped that India would be hailed as the mother of democracy.
It is paradoxical, then, that the government which claims to have such respect for the Parliament, the Constitution, democracy and Ambedkar took the unprecedented decision to dispense with the winter session of Parliament in view of the Covid-19 pandemic. What makes it stranger is that their anxiety about the virus has...
