Status Quo

After a heated, one-sided debate in Parliament, held in response to a public petition filed by concerned citizens, the Parliament has unanimously voted to speedily address the concerns of farmers protesting against the farm bills recently introduced by the government.

It was a huge help that the matters pertaining to which the resolution was passed are those of farmers in India, especially in the state of Punjab, while the unanimous vote was in the UK Parliament. Hence, once the resolution was passed, nothing needed to be done. There were high fives all around in the hallowed portals of Westminster after the vote.

Demonstrating alertness to threats to the nation from foreign sources, and taking immediate cue from the example set by the UK Parliament, India’s foreign secretary Harsh Shringla immediately summoned British High Commissioner to New Zealand, Laura Clarke, with the intention of issuing a demarche, an official protest, purposefully ignoring the British envoy to India, Alex Ellis, who may have, at least, been able to understand the issue.

As Ms. Clarke was unable to attend the meeting in person, Mr. Shringla read out the demarche to her over a phone call that included a request for the British Parliament to debate and pass resolutions on the rising fuel prices caused by escalating state and central levies, Haryana’s proposal to reserve 75% jobs for locals, the Indian cricket team representing England in Test matches in view of the English team’s recent capitulation and the widespread disbelief at replacing Amitabh Bachchan’s baritone with an unknown female voice in the mandatory-to-hear-before-every-call Covid message, among many other issues of international significance. Ms. Clarke has promised to share the message across the British envoy world, so that more and more Parliaments around the world, who have nothing to do with the issue, can pass these resolutions.

Om Birla, the speaker of the Lower House of the Indian Parliament, saluting the continuing leadership demonstrated by the UK in best practices for parliamentary democracies around the world, scrapped the day’s agenda that included a discussion on the Uttarakhand tragedy last month caused by a suspected glacier burst, and replaced it with a debate to fix responsibility for the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan ten years back. He also removed the motion to condemn suspected police atrocities against alleged Naxals in Jharkhand in favour of a motion condemning marginalisation of indigenous people in the US. He has also scheduled a motion for a peaceful handover of the part of Kashmir occupied by Pakistan, to India.

Alarmed at its Punjab farmer issue being usurped by the UK, the Canadian Prime Minister has summoned an urgent meeting of the Parliament (not yet clear which, but could just be Canadian) to pass laws to pave the way for immigration of farmers from states of India other than Punjab. This, he says, will bestow upon the Canadian government of the day a moral right to pass resolutions on how farming should be done in these states.

The US, the torchbearer of freedom and liberty, not to be left behind in the revolution sweeping across parliamentary democracies around the world, has scrambled to unanimously pass a resolution making communism illegal in Cuba. That too voluntarily. A unanimous resolution for China to accept responsibility for the Covid-19 outbreak is slated for the coming week.

Meanwhile, signatories on the resolution that led to the resolution on farming in India, in the British Parliament, have refused sponsorship to their brethren and ‘sisteren’ in Punjab looking to migrate to the UK to escape the draconian laws recently enacted. “It is for their own good,” they have clarified in a joint statement issued after Parliament passed the resolution. “If they also migrate, whose lot will we improve? They need to stay there so that we can fight for them.”

In the history of parliamentary democracies, this has been the most productive period ever. Never have so many resolutions been passed unanimously.

As a result, nothing has changed.