Parliament’s monsoon session was adjourned sine die on Thursday. In 19 sittings it passed 11 Bills. Ten of them took a combined 64 minutes on the floor of the Lok Sabha. In the case of nine Bills, only the piloting minister spoke and there was no debate. Question Hour in the Lower House functioned for 9 minutes across the entire session—1 percent of the time allotted—and of 380 questions listed for oral answer, two were answered.
That damning record brings into focus the quest to ramp up the number of MPs. Ironically, the one Bill the government could not move this session was the one aimed at expanding Parliament—the Delimitation Bill, 2026, which would raise the Lok Sabha from 543 seats to 850, mired in a swamp of politics and arithmetic.
The case for enlargement rests on the claim that smaller constituencies equal closer representation, and that closer representation means better governance. The first half of the proposition is arithmetic. The second is an empirical claim—and the weakest plank in a package carrying a great deal more than it advertises.
Begin with what an additional member could actually do. The 7th Schedule places defence, foreign affairs, currency, banking and railways with the Union, and public order, police, public health, agriculture, land and local government with the states. The Tenth Schedule disqualifies a member who votes contrary to the direction of his party. Intervention is limited by the political placard of the day—the number of calling attention and adjournment motions this session: zero.
Expansion of political representation is widely believed to improve governance via highly localised constituencies. The presumption of better outcomes is debatable. Veda Narasimhan and Jeffrey Weaver studied 12 lakh hyperlocal representatives across 1.5 lakh local governments (panchayats). The conclusion: “We find precisely estimated null effects” on core functions, including programme delivery and oversight over public finances. Another meta analysis of legislature size and public spending, led by Danilo Freire and published in the British Journal of Political Science, found “no robust evidence” that legislature size moves government budgets in either direction.
The thesis of higher representation is challenged by studies and by the anatomy of governance. Every parliament session sees ministers weave and dodge accountability for poor services. The standard formulation: health, education, law and order, cities, water, agriculture, land, labour permits are state subjects. The addition of 307 MPs will not change outcomes. They will put the same question 307 times and get the same reply.
Legislative power is backed by spending power. Last year, the states cumulatively spent Rs 63.54 lakh crore, much more than the Rs 50.65 lakh crore targeted by the Union. This year, the Union government is expected to spend over Rs 53.47 lakh crore. The biggest allocations are for subjects under the purview of states. Indeed, most of the 191 major schemes—including 29 PM-linked schemes with allocations of over Rs 4 lakh crore—are subjects listed under the states.
This week girl, students at schools in Lucknow, Alwar, Kannauj and Ujjain were out on the streets—in one case, the students locked themselves in their classrooms—seeking better conditions and more teachers. Last week, this column had highlighted that despite claims of 100 percent electrification, over 73,000 schools have no electricity.
In the 80th year of independence, over a lakh schools with 29 lakh students are single-teacher ones. Across primary healthcare centres and community centres, the positions for 9,765 doctors, 5,223 specialists, 1,910 radiographers, 8,976 pharmacists, 8,979 lab technicians and 21,843 nurses are vacant.
Almost every misery haunting the life and livelihood of citizens must be cured by the states. The missing constable, the run-down primary health centre, the teacher-less government school, the chaos in land records, vacant posts, the problem of contaminated water, slums in towns, the flooding in cities, tanker mafia thriving on poor water supply, silt and litter in municipal towns are all List II or List III.
The case for 850 MPs flies in the face of the track record of the 543 who are there. The authors of the Constitution had vested powers with the central government to scaffold the Union and empowered the states to deliver development. The trouble is that the key to power is vested in appropriation of resources. Successive Union governments pushed through amendments—the worst being the 42nd—and virtually colonised the states. Policy is designed in Delhi and implementation is with the states. The locus of poor governance is the divorce of authority and accountability.
There is no disputing that Indians need better representation. The question is where—the need for representation is far greater at ground zero. What would be the necessary and sufficient conditions? India’s next phase of growth depends on structural reforms. Start with reversal of the 42nd Amendment and restoration of the 7th Schedule to the original format Babasaheb Ambedkar and Alladi Krishnaswami Iyer had envisaged.
Delhi is scarcely the repository of wisdom—every major reform and welfare idea has come from the states. Empower the third tier of government with funds, functions and functionaries. Only when that foundation is in place does the argument for more representatives, at any tier, acquire legitimacy.
The US has not changed the size of its House of Representatives since 1913, capping it at 435, nor of its Senate since 1959, though its population has trebled. The oldest democracy and largest economy has not needed numerical optics. The addition of MPs without structural reforms may address the political deficit, but not the development deficit. Representation is not a number. It is power. What is on offer is the number.
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The Third Eye / Shankkar Aiyar