In a 1939 essay, novelist E M Forster, complimenting parliamentary democracy, wrote: “I believe in the private member who makes himself a nuisance. He gets snubbed and told that he is cranky or ill-informed, but he does expose abuses which would otherwise never have been mentioned.” For Forster, the mere “chatter” was valuable because it drew wider public attention. One wonders what he’d think of Indian Parliament today, where the only thing that draws public attention is the competitive hooliganism of law-makers.
As the Budget Session approaches an end after passing crucial financial legislation without any chatter, with most of its time washed away in cacophonic clutter, it seems to underline the central paradox of India’s parliamentary democracy in our times. While we hail the victory of democracy, Parliament as its central institution is facing a crisis of legitimacy. Instead of being accountable to it, the executive dominates its agenda. And without making any serious effort to make it accountable to Parliament, the Opposition appears keener to take up the issues to the streets.
During the last two decades, Parliament has ceased to need an excuse not to function. The reconvened Budget Session has augured particularly well for bedlam and disruption with 2G, Coalgate and other scams converging into a fresh nightmare. And now, after allowing passage of money bills in both the Houses, the principal opposition party BJP has announced that it will not cooperate with the government and allow it to conduct any more business. It will not attend any of the meetings called by the Lok Sabha Speaker or the parliamentary affairs minister.
The rub is that both the government and Opposition have been over this track many times before. The 2012 Monsoon Session was washed out over allegations of corruption by the UPA regime in the allocation of the nation’s coal deposits. Instead of seizing the opportunity it had to skewer the government on the floor of the House, the BJP boycotted business insisting that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh resign. The drama was re-enacted in the current session with the government unscrupulously manipulating the working of the Joint Parliamentary Committee, leading to a vertical split in it.
The 15th Lok Sabha has seen entire sessions lost. As it nears the end of its term, Parliament’s productive time stands at 70 per cent—significantly lower than previous Lok Sabhas. Excluding routine financial legislation, since 2009, the government had planned to introduce 390 bills, out of which only 187 have been introduced so far. It had also planned to have 365 bills scrutinised and passed. So far, 96 of them have received parliamentary approval.
Disruptions in Parliament also eat into the time available for discussing a bill. In the present Lok Sabha, roughly 35 per cent of bills were passed with an hour or less of debate, a case being the Sexual Harassment Bill—passed in September 2012 in 16 minutes. Now the whole lot of money bills, whose passage conventionally provokes intense debate, have been passed by both Houses without whimper.
Commenting on India’s experiment with parliamentary democracy, former UK prime minister Anthony Eden had said: “Of all the experiments attempted since the beginning of time, the Indian venture into parliamentary government is most exciting. A vast subcontinent is attempting to apply to its tens and thousands of millions a system of free democracy. It’s a brave thing to try to do so—if it succeeds, its influence in Asia is incalculable for good.”
Today, India’s tryst with parliamentary democracy is at crossroads. One reason, perhaps, is the quality of men who make it to the Parliament. Another is the cynical abuse of the party system by power brokers to further their personal agenda. Both the ruling party and Opposition must share the blame in equal measures. The Congress has manipulated Parliament for sheer survival of its government. The BJP has taken to the street to wrest power by default without presenting an alternative agenda of governance.
