It sometimes becomes necessary to ponder why we have a Parliament. To ask what its function is. Apart from legislative business, debate and discussion, its biggest role is that of oversight of grants released from the Consolidated Fund of India to the political executive for realising its policies. The money allocated and spent comes from and belongs to the people of India.
The MPs are only their representatives, and in a strict sense, perform their agentive (and also ombudsman-like) role only on their behalf. Their primary duty is to hold the executive accountable for those expenditures, not furtherance of their party politics. Their oath of allegiance is to the Constitution of India. It is another matter that exemplary success at that role allows some of them to attain positions in the executive themselves, where they are practically in a position to make meta-level decisions that affect the people in profound and structural ways. How must a legislator take decisions? Unilaterally? According to personal preference? Of course not.
Debate must guide policy in democracy. And where must one submit to debate doubts in a democracy? Where else but Parliament. But witness the way in which bill after bill was passed in the Lower House. Proposals became law perhaps even before the ayes had it. And controversial bills at that: ones that allowed political parties to escape scrutiny on foreign funding from a certain time horizon, salary hikes for MPs, the Appropriation Bill, the contentious one on long-term capital gains tax, and such like.
In all, there were demands from 99 ministries and departments, including two bills and 218 amendments. Look closer at the Appropriation Bill: it allows the government to withdraw `80,000 crore from the `57 lakh crore that constitutes the Consolidated Fund of India. Such are the momentous things that were passed in 30 minutes flat, without discussion, in the Lok Sabha. The verb used for passing bills thus through Parliament is apparently ‘guillotined’. Anyone who has seen the guillotine scene from the 1970s Hollywood classic Papillon will not wish it for India’s democracy.