While growing up in my small town, we were fond of playing Cricket for long hours during those summer school breaks. Part of the reason why I grew up as a thin fit youngster, but went on to become an unfit obese always-sitting-never-running adult, similar to what many of us IT sector folks have to bear. In those memorable summers of late 1990s and early 2000s, the senior school ground of our village was an intimidating turf. It was the largest ground among many towns around. Therefore, the grandest of Cricket tournaments used to be organized there.
I recall how even these professionally conducted big tournaments too were affected by the rather primitive instincts of us village simpletons. When the tempers flew high in a tense match, all civilized practices and appeals of "umpire's decision will be final" were thrown away. Stumps would be uprooted, teams would be exchanging blows and a literally physical threat would exist for the unfortunate umpires. Slogans would be shouted, respected gentlemen of the town would be called upon to mediate and and hard grudges would be suppressed and preserved for a later tournament. We laugh about those memories now. And yet, this cycle never ends, goes on and on with next generations playing in those hallowed grounds now.
Our democratically chosen representatives in the hallowed halls of parliament behave no different to be honest. Papers, mikes, even chairs and tables uprooted and thrown into the well- that's an ugly visual in not just Indian but parliament of many countries. Just the last night a political conflict got dragged into the streets of Kolkata, unfortunately maligning the revered top agencies of our nation this time. All this, to set the favorable narrative in an all watching media age.
But there are a few exceptions. European and specially American politicians are very cautious of free (really?) media and its repercussions. So they came up with another way to protest, obstruct, take hostage or sometime just deliberately waste the time during any parliamentary proceeding. This practice of talking or debating endlessly, deliberately causing the scheduled time to run out is called a Filibuster. Usually practiced by a minority opposition, this nasty yet comparatively more civilized method was invented originally by Romans. It involves a leader to speak as long as possible humanly, sometimes even 8-10 hours in parliament, without any bio-breaks. Often quoting previous laws, debates, sometimes referring to even obscure children novels, YouTube videos and reading whole pages of Newspaper articles. American senate has seen some of the most infamous Filibusters ever and the longest such has been 24:18 hours long, on an important bill- Civil Rights Act of 1957.
While there have been efforts recently to curb this unproductive practice in the US Senate, I would gladly welcome this practice in our Indian parliaments and assemblies, compared to shameful verbal/ physical spats and walkouts currently. At least that way, the taxpayer's money won't go down the drain and we will get some civilized entertainment from our otherwise largely useless politicians.
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