Sumitra Mahajan does not quite look like Wonder Woman who can smash to smithereens any animate or inanimate object that stands between her and saving the world. But this politician from Madhya Pradesh is performing a demolition job on India’s Parliament that would leave the mighty Amazon gasping in wonder, and previous occupants of the Speaker’s chair horrified. Rest assured, she is not doing anything to the round structure Lutyens built; we are talking about the institution of democracy, in which elected representatives of the people gather to form governments, hold them to account, make laws and, should that become necessary, bring governments down.

Mahajan, as Speaker, has been adjourning the House after some peremptory requests to a handful of unheeding Members of Parliament from relatively small parties, who shout slogans demanding something or the other and disrupt the normal working of the House. This, when notice has been given for a vote of no confidence against the government, taking up which should be priority for the House. Why does she allow herself to be characterised as a destabiliser of parliamentary democracy, someone who sets a precedent that a future minority government can use to foil any no-confidence motion brought against it, so long as it can muster a handful of people to create some disruption every time Parliament convenes?

To solve any criminal mystery, the first thing to look for is motive. What is Mahajan’s motive in not allowing the House to conduct any business and ruining her own reputation as Speaker? Nothing personal, surely. She can only be acting on the instructions of her political leadership, which does have a motive for aborting a discussion on the no-confidence motion brought against it.

The government, of course, has the numbers needed to defeat any vote of no confidence. So, no existential threat persuades the government to thwart a vote in the House on a motion registering the House’s loss of confidence in it. Rather, the government probably wants to avoid the detailed discussion of the government’s follies and foibles that would take place in the run-up to a no-confidence vote. The government would have to face the embarrassment the Opposition raking up the Nirav Modi-Punjab National Bank scam, along with questions on the number of jobs created, farmer suicides, unkept promises on bringing black money back to the country, cow vigilantism, attacks on Muslims and Dalits, the exoneration of Jinnah for India’s Partition (the blame being pinned exclusively on Jawaharlal Nehru), erratic policy towards Pakistan, economic damage wrought by demonetisation, the leakage of CBSE question papers and similar other matters.

While there would be few takers for any charge that the government colluded in Nirav Modi scamming PNB, there is no getting around the fact that the bulk of the illegal transactions took place during the tenure of the present government, although the fraudulent operations commenced seven years ago, when the UPA held office. Opposition stalwarts and even Shiv Sena allies can be trusted to puncture, with picturesque flourish, the boast that the political leadership would not allow any scam to take place on its watch.

The AIADMK has been reduced to a BJP puppet, with O Panneerselvam having thanked Modi profusely for his blessing for his AIADMK faction forming the government. Jagan Reddy is trying to replace Chandrababu Naidu as BJP’s ally in Andhra Pradesh. Both these parties can be counted on to create a ruckus in Parliament, at the behest of the ruling alliance. All it requires is for the Speaker to act powerless before disruption of the House by a handful of people, for the House not to take up the vote of no confidence moved against the government.

How natural is it for the Speaker to let a handful of teeny weeny members of itsy-bitsy parties hold up Parliament as a whole? It is logical to conclude that the Speaker and the protesting MPs are working in tandem to prevent Parliament from functioning and carrying out a detailed discussion of the government’s performance, as it debates a vote of no confidence. It would be comically easy to derail parliamentary democracy in this fashion but once the task is done, it would take a marvellous effort to rebuild the institution. Shame on you, Sumitra Mahajan.