DC Edit | Parliament Fast Losing Hallowed Place In Indian Democracy

The statistics tell the tale best: Lok Sabha functioned for 30 per cent of its allotted time and Rajya Sabha 39 per cent. The Monsoon Session of Parliament was a virtual washout except for the discussion on Operation Sindoor which, though belated, was something the Opposition as well as the government may have wanted.

The pattern is no different from what it has been in the last 16 years since when the Opposition, be it the BJP-NDA back then against the UPA or the INDIA bloc now, has believed that demonstrativeness is the answer to the government’s scornful attitude towards the legislative wing of a parliamentary democracy.

The net result is that India has become far more of an electoral democracy than a functioning parliamentary democracy. A government assumes power for five years in which time it sees very little need for addressing the need for meaningful discussions in the legislature and the Opposition takes to disrupting the proceedings except in the few debates that it would like to participate in, like the Union Budget.

Every issue becomes the medium of disruption of legislative functioning even as bills are passed routinely without any discussion, including laws of some import like the Indian Ports Bill and the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Bill. Opposition to three amendment bills hit a high as they contained provisions that are a threat to the very foundations of democracy in a throwback to the dark days in the wake of the Emergency of 1975-77.

There were serious issues like the SIR exercise by the Election Commission of India that seemed to run into excesses of omission of voters rather than an inclusive view of an Indian adult’s right to vote. Instead of leading to discussion in a format that the Treasury benches and the Opposition should agree upon, the poll rolls became the focus of disruption as the government hid behind the specious reasoning that the EC is an autonomous body and hence cannot be the discussed in Parliament.

The month-long Monsoon Session was the quintessence of the country’s loud democracy in which traditions and decorum of the legislature mean less. Polarised politics has veered to such an extreme that the Opposition did not even deem it fit to share, at the end of a session, a cup of tea with the Speaker and the Prime Minister in the former’s chamber, as was a custom built from days when politics was not so rife with division and discord.

The heart of legislative business must lie in issues being discussed in detail before bills are passed so that flaws may be ironed out and laws may stand up for prompt execution. The fact that 12 bills were passed in the Lok Sabha and 15 in the Rajya Sabha without much serious discussion points to how Parliament sessions have been reduced to long working vacations for MPs whose salaries and perquisites are not subject to any kind of scrutiny.

The routine promises made in the all-party meeting held ahead of every “stormy” session of Parliament are quickly forgotten as this strategy of saying and acting loudly in orchestrated defiance of procedure to simply disrupt proceedings has become the norm. This is a paradox since the Houses of Parliament and Assemblies are spaces in which the Opposition can demand and get time to speak up and question the government.

The quality of debates has also descended into personal slanging matches, so much so that standards have plummeted beyond redemption since the halcyon days when MPs took their duties and responsibilities seriously enough to bring their concerns and their ideas to the Houses of Parliament. The very model of our democracy has been altered, courtesy the ruling coalition as well as the Opposition.