No one, particularly those who know him from his days as a bubbly Congress loyalist from the Garo tribe, in a state (Meghalaya) dominated by the ethnically dominant and anti-Congress Khasis, would doubt Lok Sabha Speaker Purno Sangma's sense of humour. Or his ability to have a spirited laugh at the end of a hard day in this chaotic Parliament. But no one quite knew his penchant for Chinese torture.

That is what he is now inflicting on the 787 sitting members of the two Houses as they troop into Parliament this morning, at the unprecedented, 50th anniversary soul-searching session called by him. The problem is, the session has no agenda, no zero hour to create a ruckus, no Bills to debate and, if Sangma has his way, no division along party lines. Which, precisely, is the problem.

The challenge here is to generate a genuinely non-partisan debate that addresses vital issues of national interest. This is a tall order and the reason why even the star performers of all parties, who can usually spend hours filibustering, grandstanding or name-calling, without a moment's preparation, have spent restless nights preparing for this big, nationally-televised occasion.

They have been petty politicians so long, even the thought of rising to this level of statesmanship now scares them. What will they say? Fight corruption? Criminality in politics? Communalism or pseudo-secularism? Is there one party in this Parliament which can look you in the eye and claim to be free of any of these curses? Why wasn't there a whimper of protest when I.K. Gujral complained last week that Parliament was now full of people you wouldn't like to be seen socially associating with?

Jaded ideas and tired minds that fill up Parliament benches now could make for deadly boring television. But if the same minds were to forget power politics for a moment and reflect on what they, as a class, have lost over the past 50 years, and how they have diminished the achievements of India's democracy and freedom in the process, they may find an answer to their predicament.

The crux of the issue is the total loss of popular faith in the political and governing classes. People still go out to vote in large numbers. But there is growing cynicism, a belief that the choices the voter is being offered are very poor -- that sab-chor-hain (they are all thieves) feeling. You cannot run a democracy without politicians and freedom is incomplete without democracy. Therefore, when the political class loses popular confidence so completely, it blights the very notion of freedom and democracy.

It may be too much yet to expect India's political class to reassert old values. But let's at least have some ideas. Our politicians today merely shrug in hopelessness and curse the inevitability of living with a fractured polity and shifting coalitions. Because they are so resigned to living with these steroidal arrangements, people are being persuaded to live with common minimum governance, or the compulsions of this coalition or the next.

Collectively, as a nation, we have been psyched into setting the bar so low that we are losing our capacity to even aim higher. So what if there is no governance on the vital issues of economy and security, at least new governors get appointed? This is what the system is reduced to.

Martin Jacques, editor of the now extinct Marxism Today, argued in a controversial essay The End of Politics that the era of larger-than-life politicians was over. They have now been replaced by small politicians with small ideas, their vision extending not beyond their next election. But can you say even that much for the national leadership that will be on view on your TV screens today? If only our small politicians had small ideas, at least extending to the next election, they would not be so resigned to yet another hung Parliament so easily.

They don't have to go far, not even as far as the Parliament library which most of them rarely visit, to know that in democracy, ideas sell. Indira Gandhi sold the idea of garibi hatao through benign socialism. Nehru sold the dream of a new India. Rajiv was most successful hawking the idea of clean governance. All of them ultimately failed to deliver but at least, focused on the elections, they thought creatively and won huge mandates.

What great new ideas have emerged in India in the last decade? V.P. Singh's social justice was an interesting proposition but was soon trivialised into Mandalism and finally buried as a political idea under Laloo's fodder. The BJP, too, thought creatively with Hindutva as a new, and contrary to popular, `secular' view, not an entirely religion-driven concept of Indian nationalism, garnished with generous dollops of Gandhian socialism. It was quickly demolished by the Sadhvi Rithambaras and Ashok Singhals along with a mosque in Ayodhya where no one ever prayed. Narasimha Rao, with all his intellect, couldn't quite convince his own party or even himself that economic reform was a great new idea. This collective failure has now resulted in this Parliament, and the so-called inevitability of similar arrangements in the future. What hope do we have in a system where the tallest of our leaders, Atal Behari Vajpayee, now has to sell the idea of kheer in preference to khichdi?

It is this defeatism, this intellectual bankruptcy, this complete lack of creative thinking that the politician needs to address today. If he is depressed at the thought of living with coalitions for ever, the voter is even more so. Offer him an idea he will buy, and he will gratefully give you a majority.

Don't worry even if you can't think original. Smart politicians all over the world are either stealing or borrowing trendy ones even from their ideological adversaries. Democracies even lionise idea-thieves as long as they are clever.

Look at the spectacular revival of the so-called socialists in Europe as they, following Tony Blair, steal conservative ideas just after losing the war on economic philosophy. We all know how touching Bill Clinton's commitment to family values is and yet he is quick to seize upon that, and communitarianism, as slogans at a time when society is the key issue on the American agenda. In the marketplace of ideas, it doesn't matter if you beg, borrow or steal. Just find something the voter will buy, and quickly, for his patience with the politician, and democracy, is fast running out.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.