Our leaders should look past politics

This should come as a surprise to none of our readers. Our national leaders have shown, once again, that they like the idea of putting their respective political parties above the interests of the country. To put things into perspective, let’s put aside the bad news currently occupying the corridors of power for a moment and focus on the worse news.

For one, showing persistent sluggishness, India’s economy grew by 5.5 per cent in the April-June quarter this fiscal due to poor performance of the manufacturing, mining and farm sectors. In Mumbai, the BSE benchmark Sensex fell by over 71 points in early trade yesterday on fresh selling by funds ahead of first quarter Gross Domestic Product data. The National Stock Exchange index Nifty shed 29.15 points, or 0.55 per cent, to 5,285.90. Stocks of IT, power and realty sectors lead the fall.

There’s more. According to research firm Moody’s, economic growth during the April-June quarter is expected at 5.2 percent and the economy will continue to perform below potential for the entire year.

Here’s what our leaders have been up to. Yesterday, outside Parliament, Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav and a number of MPs from other parties sat on a dharna to seek a judicial inquiry into coal blocks allocation. Apparently, they were also protesting the continued disruption of Parliament. Our party in Opposition, on the other hand, announced a nationwide protest over the coal blocks allocations. This call came after they had stalled Parliament for seven days over the same issue.

As non members of Parliament, we were always under the impression that those august Houses existed so our leaders could use them as a space to debate and discuss ways and means of making India a better place. Our leaders have made us question that logic.

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