Thursday's shocking events in the Indian parliament when some MPs abused one another in vile language, hurled a microphone and nearly came to blows exposed the dark side of the country's much vaunted electoral politics as never before.

Till now, such rowdy conduct had taken place in some state legislatures but not in parliament, which had generally set a higher standard notwithstanding frequent noisy disruptions and walkouts. But the latest incident showed that the thin line that had so far separated this august body from the more unruly state assemblies is gradually vanishing.

India has always been proud of its thriving democracy, which sees popular verdicts being delivered at various levels throughout the year from the village panchayats to urban municipalities to state legislatures and, finally, to parliament in New Delhi.

But during this process the country has chosen to turn a blind eye to the nature of the churning which occurs in the political arena, throwing up elements whose influence in their constituencies depends more on the fear they generate than on the respect they earn.

Over the years, the dominance of these candidates has come to be known as the criminalization of politics, denoting a severe lowering of the standards of behaviour expected from the elected representatives of the people.

It was this degeneration of the political atmosphere that was on display Thursday in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of parliament. Not surprisingly, among the protagonists who exchanged unprintable abuses were Janata Dal-United MP Prabhunath Singh, who was subsequently accused by Railway Minister Lalu Prasad of being guilty of 40 murders - all of them of upper caste Rajputs.

Prabhunath Singh's opponent in the ugly melee was Lalu Prasad's notorious brother-in-law Sadhu Yadav, against whom a non-bailable warrant is pending. It may not have been a coincidence that all these 'honourable' MPs belong to Bihar, the state that sank to the lowest depths in nearly all indices of development and law and order when Lalu Prasad was chief minister.

The Indian public is used to seeing scenes of disturbance in parliament because of the live telecast of the proceedings. On Thursday, however, they missed the most egregious of the incidents as the telecast was abruptly stopped as soon as Speaker Somnath Chatterjee adjourned the house and walked out after failing to restore order.

But the groups of school children who were in the visitors' galleries before being herded out expressed their shock and dismay that grown-up people could behave in such a disgraceful manner.

It doesn't take great wisdom to see that such reprehensible conduct can be eradicated if the political class shows a greater willingness to remove those with a criminal background from their midst.

According to one estimate, 72 MPs out of a total of 542 have dubious antecedents, and so do as many as 700 members of legislative assemblies (MLAs) out of 4,000 in the states. Nor are the politicians unaware of the various proposals made to eliminate this menace by the Election Commission and the Law Commission.

One of the proposals is to stop a candidate from contesting if a charge-sheet in a criminal case has been framed against him in a court of law, thereby suggesting that there is a prima facie case against him.

But all the politicians from the left to the right of the political spectrum have resolutely set their face against such steps to cleanse the system on the grounds that no one can be considered guilty unless convicted by a court.

But, as is known, such convictions are extremely difficult to obtain because the politicians, who may be criminals themselves or retain anti-social elements in their camps, can easily terrorize any potential witness to their wrong deeds against testifying before a magistrate.

The reason for the entry of an increasing number of these muscle men, as they are called, in Indian politics is, first, the reluctance of decent people from respectable families to contest because of the bad name the profession has earned over the years.

Secondly, the proliferation of parties has meant that enormous resources in terms of money and manpower are needed during elections. These requirements have grown exponentially because of the large number of elections that are fought nowadays to the state legislatures and parliament because of the instability of the governments.

No party, therefore, can afford to tread the straight and narrow path. Instead, they have to increasingly depend on questionable sources of income and unsavoury characters to conduct the campaign that includes, more often than not, the tactics of intimidating the voters.

Hence, the presence of 'tainted' ministers like Lalu Yadav, the prime accused in the Bihar fodder scam, and Shibu Soren, the coal minister who has a murder charge pending against him. And such is their indispensability to the parties in power that even a prime minister like Manmohan Singh, known for his personal integrity, has no option but to retain them in his cabinet.

The only possible solution is for an intensive campaign in the media, especially the increasingly influential visual one, to highlight the incidents, such as the one Thursday, and provide detailed information about the criminal backgrounds of the MPs and MLAs.

Perhaps only then will the political class be shamed into taking corrective steps. Otherwise, they will happily let the bad apples remain in their midst.