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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Undermining Parliament

Undermining Parliament

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published Published on Dec 14, 2011   modified Modified on Dec 14, 2011

-EPW

 

The ruling party and the opposition have become partners in the crime of destroying Parliament.

The first nine days of the winter session of Parliament were completely lost due to repeated disruption of the house and adjournments. Most of the blame can be put at the door of the opposition parties which seem to have taken a decision not to allow the smooth functioning of Parliament, though some ruling party members too have been involved in creating disruption in the House.

The disruptions in the winter session are in line with the disruptions in the previous sessions of the sitting 15th Lok Sabha and there seems to be a secular decline in the time Parliament has been giving to the work it should be doing. A Member of Parliament recently pointed out that the Lower House was in session for 128 days each year during the 1950s, for 100 days at the end of the 1980s and for only 70 days in the noughties. Even when in session, time is lost due to disruptions: 9%, 5% and 10% in the 10th, 11th and 12th Lok Sabhas, respectively. The 14th Lok Sabha saw as much as 38% of the time lost because of disruptions; this may be even higher in the 15th Lok Sabha (Indian Express, 7 December 2011).

The opposition is usually blamed for disruptions in Parliament, but recent Congress Party-led governments have shown a poor record of parliamentary management. According to statistics compiled by PRS Legislative Research, there were a total of 2,910 hours of sitting planned in the Eighth Lok Sabha (1984-89) when the Rajiv Gandhi government was in office. The Lower House actually sat for business for 3,223 hours, or 111% of the allocated time during those years. In the next Congress-dominated Lok Sabha, the 10th, which sat from 1991 to 1996, a total of 2,538 hours of business were planned by the government and the House sat for almost the entire time allocated. Those who remember the politics of these Lok Sabhas will identify the weakness of the Narasimha Rao government’s support compared to the bulldozer majority of Rajiv Gandhi as one of the reasons why the government reduced the number of parliamentary sittings in the 10th Lok Sabha. But this logic does not hold for the 14th Lok Sabha which saw the return of the Congress to power in the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government. Though the Congress did not have a majority of its own, it faced a routed Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and enjoyed stable support from its allies, both within and outside the government at least for the first four years. Yet, ­compared to 20 years ago the Congress-led UPA government of 2004-09 called Parliament to session for only 1,992 hours during its tenure. This is a sharp fall of 918 hours of planned sitting in the 14th Lok Sabha compared to the Eighth Lok Sabha of 1984-89, and since Parliament sits for six hours a day this was a decline of 153 days of Parliament in session. Thus the central government only called Parliament to session for two-thirds of the time it did two decades before. This is a very sharp fall which cannot be justified under any circumstance, much less so under the benign political conditions faced by UPA-I.

Unfortunately, the 14th Lok Sabha functioned for only 1,736 out of the planned 1,992 hours, or 87% of its time. This shows the dangerous levels of decline in the functioning of the Lok Sabha and much of the blame for this rests on the ruling dispensation. It is clear from this trend that the government does not like to face the elected representatives of the people but would rather rush through its legislative and other businesses in Parliament in the least possible time. Compared to the fact that the British parliament sits for about 200 days in a year, why was the Indian Parliament called to session for only about 66 days in a year between 2004 and 2009? It should be pointed out that while the Congress has reduced the number of sittings of Parliament, the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance government also reduced the total time of Parliament during its full five-year term in the 13th Lok Sabha (1999-2004). The Ninth Lok Sabha (1989-91) with V P Singh and Chandrashekhar as prime ministers and the 11th Lok Sabha (1996-98) with the United Front government too saw drastically reduced parliamentary sittings. Thus this seems to be a cross-party affliction.

As the time available for parliamentary proceedings reduces so does the ability of its members to raise concerns and issues, in particular of those from the opposition parties who may not have access to the ministers and bureaucrats in-charge. As the number of days Parliament was in session in a year halved from 107 in 1984-89 to 57 in 2004-09, it squeezed out time for deliberations and debates and put a premium on spectacular action which would catch the attention of the people, especially after the introduction of television cameras in Parliament. To this secular trend of reduced parliamentary time is the added factor of the political dead-end that the main parties find themselves in. The main opposition party, the BJP is still searching for an agenda for its politics, even while it is fighting organisational disarray. The left contingent still seems to have not recovered from the twin electoral shocks of 2009 and 2011 while the various regional parties have lost their sense of purpose which the “Third Front” gave them on the national stage. Together, these parties do not seem to have a single constructive idea and use the most disruptive of parliamentary tactics to corner the ruling alliance. As for the ruling Congress, between its prime minister who has not won a Lok Sabha election and its de facto leader who is still learning the ropes, Parliament appears to be an unnecessary distraction.

It is clear that the disruptionist behaviour of the opposition parties and the neglect by the ruling dispensations now present a real threat to Parliament as the central institution of Indian democracy. This can have fatal consequences for the republic and immediate measures must be taken to reverse these trends. For starters we should ask the government to hold ­parliamentary sessions for at least four months each year and non-functional days should be compensated for by working ­extra days.

Economic and Political Weekly, Vol XLVI, No.51, 17 December, 2011, http://beta.epw.in/newsItem/comment/190763/

Tagged with: Governance



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