There’s less security than at your local five-star hotel and, for all its reform, the loos are still leaky and unwashed. But there’s no doubt that yesterday in Parliament when Pranab Mukherjee presented Budget 2011-2012, even the Opposition benches caught a bit of the ‘pleased-with-ourselves’ air of the Treasury benches.
Of course, not everyone looked as delighted with himself as the finance minister, who bounced in waving his red briefcase around the hall like a 5th grader showing off his football trophy. Sonia Gandhi, who had arrived a good 15 minutes ahead of him and had slid into her seat with minimum fuss, was her usual tense, twitchy self, attending to senior partymen in her familiar, slightly antiseptic, imperious manner.
There must be a warm, friendly side to the leader of the UPA, but she had left that side firmly at home for this day, though. On display amongst the country’s elected representatives, she was prim, even severe, and the sight of her confabulating with senior partymen, including a deferential Ashwini Kumar, reminded me most of a housewife taking ‘dhobi hisab’.
Deciphering body language is a particularly satisfying art when it comes to Parliamentary sketches. For instance, volumes could be written about the frostiness between the three front benchers on Pranabda’s right: P Chidambaram, Sharad Pawar and Sonia.
Take the cursory manner in which Chidambaram greeted the leader of the UPA and her cool response, or the sulk encrypted all over the agriculture minister’s body and his pointed tilt away from Mrs G. No love lost between those three, for sure.
But besides the politics that hung in the acres of space between Chidambaram, Pawar and Sonia, and the care they took to avoid looking at each other, there was the Prime Minister’s wounded stance (like a man in whom something rankles and who must grind his teeth all night), T R Baalu’s louche sprawl, Farooq Abdullah huddled in a shawl like he was still wrapped in a Kashmir winter, a furtive Murli Deora, a ferrety Kamal Nath, the frisky bubblegum brigade of Pilot, Prasad and their ilk, Sibal and Ramesh’s open and transparent stance and so on and so forth.
These may be the servants of the electorate -- the men and women you and I have elected to serve us and our needs -- but believe me, when seated across from them in Parliament they most resemble commuters on a local train, huddled together on a seat too small to fit their giant personalities. Or egos. Or ambitions.
And God help me, but one could not help but speculate on the combined alleged wealth contained in that room full of men and women given to thumping tables in a show of political correctness on the announcement of tax relief for lower-income groups, but men and women who looked a bit shifty when the FM brought up the issue of black money, tax evasion and wealth stashed abroad.
In fact, on the question of black money, when Pranabda promised “effective action”, so riveted was I by the rows and rows of dollar signs seated in front of me, that I could have sworn I heard “evasive action”, and did I imagine that twitch of unease that triggered through the hall?
Apart from a “shame, shame” here, and a “hear, hear” there, this Budget speech went off boringly quietly, except when Pranabda cracked a joke at around 12 noon, waking up some backbenchers, when he announced tax relief for very senior citizens (“ I, myself, have not yet reached 80”). This made Sonia smile!
Sibal looked coy and delighted at the announcement of investment in the education sector; Mamata looked somewhat chastened after her pugnacious presentation last week, and spent all her time scribbling notes, avoiding eye contact with her fellow parliamentarians.
There was a surprising lack of shouting in the hall (the only times a few “shame, shames” and “bogus” rent the air were on the issues of corruption, the census, DTC and pensions). Mulayam Singh Yadav, who has all the personality of a shoe box, appeared as just that and an empty one too; Laloo strolled in and out of the House at ease and at will. Shashi Tharoor loped in half-way through the proceedings; the Rajya Sabha gallery was host to the posh N K Singh and Shobhana Bhartia; Rahul Bajaj alone represented the business brigade
Of course, even though there had been scenes of high rancour and blood curdling accusations the past few weeks, the natural bonhomie and good-natured biradari of Parliament had been restored. And the proceedings went off in the slightly incredulous we’ve-pulled-it-off-again chaotic warmth that has come to represent Indian public life.
Except on the Treasury front bench. Believe me, the temperature on Budget morning was around 22 degrees Celsius in the Lok Sabha; it was 5 degrees cooler where Sonia, Chidambaram and Pawar sat.
