Offices that need the pink slip

It was amusing to see the three parliamentary affairs ministers — Messrs Pralhad Joshi, Arjun Ram Meghwal, and V Muraleedharan — standing to attention, looking important, on either side of the prime minister, as he spoke to reporters on the first day of the monsoon session of Parliament. With the size of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) majority in the Lok Sabha and healthy numbers in the Rajya Sabha, parliamentary affairs ministers need to do very little: Ordinances can become Acts effortlessly even if the Opposition opposes them bitterly. Question hour can be scrapped with little or no consultation. And the Business Advisory Committee (BAC, the body that decides how much time each issue should get for a debate) can be bent to the government’s will.

But it wasn’t always like this. Cast your mind back to the bitterly cold night of December 30, 2011, when the Lok Pal Bill was to have been passed by the Rajya Sabha, with the Lok Sabha having cleared it the previous day. It was the last day of the winter session and everyone knew that if the Bill was not passed, not only would it backfire badly on the government politically, but also the legislation would be delayed unconscionably. The United Progressive Alliance (UPA) was a coalition at odds with itself. Then parliamentary affairs minister Pawan Bansal admitted freely that no one had any control over alliance partners, especially when they sensed the government could be blackmailed. Till the last minute, Mr Bansal and his colleagues begged, pleaded, and cajoled with individual members to end the ruckus so that the Bill could be debated and passed.

It was not to be. At around 11 pm, Rajniti Prasad of the Rashtriya Janata Dal, supposedly an ally of the Congress government, came to the well of the house, flung papers around, and exhorted his other colleagues to shout slogans. The Opposition had moved 200 amendments to the Bill. Although the parliamentary affairs minister was sure that he could keep the midnight deadline, it didn’t happen. Later, as the BJP turned on the government, Mr Bansal had to get up and say that the responsibility for the Bill failing was not the chairman’s – as parliamentary affairs minister, it was his and his alone. The Bill was passed in the budget session the following year, but not before the government’s commitment to ending corruption was questioned scathingly with the leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, Arun Jaitley, dubbing the whole sorry spectacle “Fleedom at Midnight”.

The two Manmohan Singh governments had a super whip in the shape of Pranab Mukherjee, who could use his rage – and his considerable charm – to make intransigent alliance partners fall in line. The testing time was the Indo-US civil nuclear agreement, which forced the Left parties to part ways with the Congress, leaving a numerical deficit that was eventually filled by the Samajwadi Party. The full story of the give and take is yet to be told. But the exertions of the parliamentary affairs ministers should not be underestimated.

Past BJP governments too have had to do their share of pleading. Pramod Mahajan, the charismatic parliamentary affairs minister who assisted Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s minority government, had to exert every ounce of charm and extend every inducement to get the Opposition to pass legislation. When Sushma Swaraj was given the job, she went about it with competence and aplomb, earning plaudits even from political adversaries. Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee ignored his party’s chagrin and said she was the best parliamentary affairs minister India had ever had.

Sushma Swaraj, Pawan Bansal, and Pramod Mahajan excelled at their job because the situation demanded it. 

But now?

The Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs grandly describes itself as a small ministry but of key importance in the government. Really?

With the slide of the economy and pressure on the government to reduce expenditure, there are at least two departments that need review and, eventually, downsizing. One is the Ministry of Defence. With the CDS and all the associated bells and whistles in place, why does India need an elaborate Ministry of Defence and a defence secretary? (A former defence secretary wryly made the same point at a conference organised by the Centre for Policy Research last year.)

And with this kind of majority, do we really need the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs in its present form? The government has abolished the Handloom and Powerloom Boards in the Ministry of Textiles. Shouldn’t it revisit other such vestigial organs – including the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs?