Too many cooks spoil the broth

Hi again. I am back with another article. This was also published by me some months ago, but again, the idea behind the article is still relevant now. Remember a few months ago when the UPA Government was almost on the verge of collapsing? There was a heated debate on the Indo-US nuclear deal and the Leftists ultimately withdrew support to the Government prompting the Samajwadi Party to renew contacts with the Congress. Well, this post is related to the happenings in the Indian Parliament at that time; so, refresh your memories a little. [:)]

"I know the title of this post does sound a little childish, but that's how our Parliament is. I'm sure many of you saw proceedings of the trust vote in Parliament today. UPA did win finally, but not before a lot of hoopla about side-switching, back-stabbing and bribing on either side. In order to survive, the Government had to woo hitherto nationally unimportant leaders like Shibu Soren by promising him a berth in Union Cabinet. Ditto with some obscure MPs from the North-East who had to be offered fancy perks. The opposition, on the other hand, had to allegedly bow to Ajit Singh's demand of naming Lucknow airport after his father [he is the leader of RLD, a party with a paltry 3-4 MPs in Parliament]. There were also reports of many of the Samajwadi MPs being successfully poached by BSP. On the other hand, TRS said that they would vote for or against the nuclear deal depending on who amongst NDA and UPA will listen to their demand of a separate state of Telangana. So, a party is deciding its stance on an inter-nation agreement depending upon what happens to their state-level demand. There are lot more of such stories doing the rounds, and one cannot say all are completely false.

I feel we're in such a mess because of existence of too many parties in India. Every time a crisis occurs, party bosses begin making groups. In the process, every party promises to support that group which will concede to it's demands. If the demands are not met, the party removes support and tries to break the group and form a new one. So essentially our democracy is about group-making, putting some idiotic regional/local issues as conditions for support, having endless negotiations and ultimately breaking up because after all, not everyone's demands can be met. When shall we get time to do constructive work after all this? Our democracy spends more time in making and breaking alliances and debating. Instead, if there were only 2 or a maximum of 3 parties [as a rule], wouldn't we be more productive? Look at USA's democratic model. In our country, if a leader like Raj Thackeray feels "hurt" or "neglected" in a regional party like Shiv Sena, he leaves the party and forms an even smaller outfit like MNS. And it is parties like these which have 2-3 MPs up there who become the deal-makers or breakers in crucial situations like the nuclear deal. The sad thing is that they do not take decisions based on what's good for the country, but on how much effective their actions will be for their local level petty politics."