The nation has been rocked recently with the news of three BJP MLAs in Karnataka caught watching pornographic clips and photographs on a mobile phone, whilst exercising their "duties" in one of the so called temples of our democracy - the Karnataka Legislative Assembly. Not even the fiercest advocates of free expression or free will would argue for this shameful act - do it in your house, in your bedroom, fine! But the legislative assembly! C'mon!! Even a teenager with raging hormones would know not to indulge in such liberties in a public place, leave alone THE state legislative assembly!!!! And we thought watching images of politicians dozing off in the Parliament with open mouths, throwing shoes and mikes on each other, scuffling and slapping, was proof enough that we are being governed by a bunch of immature kids, who have no sense of responsibility to the country whatsoever. But what the heck, we are the ones who put em' there, aren't we?
So anyway, the ironic twist in this incident is that it involves MLAs from a right-wing party, associates of which have taken up the "honorable" task of moral policing in our country, by going after couples cosying up in parks, vandalizing shops and terrorizing couples on Valentine's Day, attempting to chastise women for dressing up "inappropriately" or going to discos and pubs. Yes, its the very state where women were beaten up for going to a disco or bar (not really sure what was it), by members (oh sorry, I believe the word is hooligans!) of the "Sri Ram Sena" - a right wing group which has taken upon itself the burden of preserving Indian culture, tradition and values in this particular state of Karnataka. And what's more, the main miscreant in this "porngate" once gave a statement implying that women who don't dress appropriately invite rape. I wonder if he was checking that theory out? His laughable justification for this act, according to an article in The Hindu was that the video clippings had women dancing and they were raped by four men. He said, "Palemar told me such things happen abroad in rave parties. Since the House was discussing the Malpe rave party, I watched it...... Just watching it is not a crime." Tell me if this doesn't make you laugh out loud, you know, once you overcome the burning indignation at the stupidity of that statement. To top it all, he "rules out" resigning over the issue. The party has condemned it, isolated itself from the incident and says it was a personal act by the MLAs and not representative of the party. Though it is true, but for a party that demands the resignation of a different Congress leader every other week, its shameful that it refuses to suspend these three offenders from their posts, leave alone the party!
But the thing about all this that really got me worked up was the response of the speaker, which was to "form a committee" to investigate the issue and file a report by March 13. I mean .... What is there to investigate? What will the in-house "committee" do? Sit around, joke about the whole thing, have tea and snacks and go home? What else is there to do except suspend the three offenders, which the speaker can do, and make sure that they do not see the insides of the House ever again? The solution to every crisis in India, it seems, is to form a committee. Whether its riots, or a multi-billion scam, or something as trivial as this one - just form a Committee - or loosely translated as - buy time to subtly push everything under the rug. How many of these committees have ever actually led to an outcome? I bet if they were asked to answer this question, they'll probably set up another committee to probe this issue!