New Delhi: The Parliament’s Budget session is often full of economic jargon and technical-financial conversations, but the proceedings also have an abundance of what the Lok Sabha Secretariat calls “wit and humour”.
The Lok Sabha website’s debates section maintains a special list of all such sections from House discussions and debates, where parliamentarians used “wit and humour, poetry and couplet”.
ThePrint has analysed information from this section, from the 14th to 17th Lok Sabha, including the latest Winter session in December 2022, to find that the maximum use of such ornamentation in oration — poems, couplets, repartees, humour, songs and shlokas — are recorded during the Budget session, and their usage has risen considerably during the second term of the Narendra Modi government — from 2019 onwards.
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Wit and humour on the rise
The second term of the Prime Minister Modi-led NDA government has recorded the maximum instances of MPs indulging in such oratorical flourishes — 519. This number is likely to go up before the current Lok Sabha ends its term, with elections due in 2024.
Of these 519, 391 or more than 75 per cent, were reported during Budget sessions — Winter sessions followed, with 93 such speeches, and the Monsoon session witnessed only 35.
In the UPA regime preceding the Modi government coming to power, there were 40 instances of oratorical embellishments being used in speeches during the 14th Lok Sabha in 2004 — UPA’s first tenure — which rose to 129 in the 15th Lok Sabha. During the 16th Lok Sabha, when the Modi government first came to power, there were 257 such instances recorded in speeches made by parliamentarians.
The Budget session has remained the top choice for parliamentarians to display their oratorical aesthetics over the years, with 15 instances in the 14th Lok Sabha, 57 in the 15th Lok Sabha, and 147 in the 16th.
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Poets in Parliament
Since 2004, of the total 1,000 speeches that used wit, humour, poetry or some such artistic license, a total of 486 used poems, 198 used couplets, 133 included repartees. The rest used some other oratorical flourish.
Shlokas — verses or couplets in Sanskrit — have also gained popularity during the Modi government’s second term.
There were only three shlokas mentioned in the 15th Lok Sabha. In the 16th, it rose to five, but the current Lok Sabha has already seen the number jump to 69.
The use of kurals (Tamil couplets), songs, ghazals, Gurbani (Sikh hymns) and proverbs have also popped up in parliament speeches.
The index page of each session gives details of the oratorical skill used — when, who and what. Based on this information, ThePrint calculated the number of times a member used literary language in the Parliament.
Nishikant Dubey, a BJP MP from Godda constituency of Jharkhand has topped the charts, with the use of 14 poems, 13 couplets, 11 shlokas, one quotation and three verses in his speeches. Dubey has appeared 42 times in the Parliament’s “wit and humour” section since the 15th Lok Sabha (ever since he became an MP).
Dubey is followed by the BJP’s Meenakshi Lekhi, an MP from New Delhi and Union minister of state for external affairs and culture, with 12 instances of poetry in her speech, seven use of couplets, three shlokas and one song.
Former education minister and BJP’s Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’ stood third with 19 entries in this category.
Congress politicians, Mallikarjun Kharge, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, and Shashi Tharoor, also had 17, 16 and 15 entries respectively, during the 14th to 17th Lok Sabha.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been mentioned a total of nine times since the 16th Lok Sabha. He’s used seven poems, one couplet and one shloka.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)
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