Why Parliament fails

Title: Who Cares about Parliament: Speaking Up to Protect India’s Great Institution

Author: Derek O’Brien

Publisher: Rupa Publications

Pages: 395

Price: Rs 192

Enthusiastic, indefatigable and always entertaining, Derek O’Brien, two-term Trinamool Congress Rajya Sabha MP, is a treat to hear in the Upper House – when Parliament works, that is. In this book, he achieves a twin purpose: charging the two-term Narendra Modi regime with undermining and attempting to destroy India’s parliamentary democracy; and extolling the virtues of his leader Mamata Banerjee, both as Railway minister and as chief minister of West Bengal.

The book stands out for a number of reasons. The foreword is not by Important People as per usual practice, but a bunch of college kids whose submissions were selected from hundreds who wrote in their views. Somedutta Chakraborty (18) from Miranda House, Delhi University, explains why we should care about Parliament. “Parliament shapes my disposition; it gives me the power to diverge from the majority. It tells me that I shouldn’t give in to the majority and that the Opposition matters”. Surabhi Srivastava (21) from Delhi University’s Law Faculty writes: “Despite us slipping into ‘electoral autocracy’ or ‘partly free democracy’, Parliament is the institutional bedrock of popular sovereignty, political equality and freedom. It is the means of democracy that stood for liberty in extraordinary circumstances and brought progressive laws to life.”

The essays that follow amplify many of these concerns. O Brien’s accessible, sometimes expansive and lavish, prose touches trends that have become parliamentary norm. He points out, rightly, that Parliament has a consultative committee mechanism that examines legislation in detail, giving it the attention it deserves that might be missed in the hubbub of its passage. But in the last ten years especially, the rate of Bills referred to committees for scrutiny has been dropping. Worse, there is a tendency to use committees as political tools.

For instance, a meeting of the Information Technology Committee to be held in July, 2021 was to take up the issue of the Pegasus spyware attacks. But ten people who were physically present at the meeting chose not to sign the attendance register. As a result, the meeting could not be held for want of quorum. He leaves the readers to guess the party of these members. He also reminds readers that when a Bill is passed, every MP has the right to demand a vote by division (electronic vote). “Three draconian anti-farmer laws were passed by voice vote in the Rajya Sabha,” he writes, ignoring members who sought a division. The outcome of the process might not have been different – the Bills would still have passed, probably. But it is the principle of the thing.

O’Brien is an opposition MP, so he can be excused for letting the government and the prime minister have it when it comes to parliamentary practice and tradition. But, he says, some basics cannot be ignored. Since Modi became PM, the PMO has answered only 13 questions compared to 85 questions answered by Dr Manmohan Singh’s PMO in the previous ten years of United Progressive Alliance (UPA) rule (he does not say how many questions were put), but asks: “When was the last time the PM answered a question on the floor of Parliament?” This question becomes germane in the current situation where the opposition has all but declared it won’t let Parliament function until the PM himself addresses both Houses of Parliament on the issue of Manipur, leading to a possible washout of the monsoon session.

When it comes to disruption, O’Brien says the opposition has learnt this art – and craft – at the feet of the gurus. He quotes the late Arun Jaitley (for whom, incidentally, he has words of high praise) as saying in 2012 that the right to disrupt was “a legitimate tactic for the opposition to expose the government through parliamentary instruments available at its command” in case “parliamentary accountability is subverted and a debate is intended to be used merely to put a lid on parliamentary accountability”. Sushma Swaraj, he notes, said the same thing.

Interestingly, O’Brien does not shy away from using his party’s principal political rivals, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), to buttress a point he himself is making. He quotes Sitaram Yechury on the need for a space like the Central Hall where MPs, former and present, are able to interact with journalists. He supports CPI (M) MP Elamaram Kareem’s demand on divisions.

Unsurprisingly, Mamata Banerjee pops up all over the book as his inspiration. His criticism of Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah is unsparing though many will wonder if some of the blame he attributes to them (“demonetisation was financial genocide” for instance) is entirely accurate. He also indulges the opposition when it comes to errors of omission – no one in the opposition thought it fit to raise the issue of the “judicial murder” of Father Stan Swamy, or the serious dangers to civil rights in protests like the ones held at Bhima Koregaon in 2018. Neither does O'Brien, pointing to a conspiracy of silence. 

As the two Houses prepare to shift to a new edifice, he says Parliament is not just a new building; it is an establishment with old traditions and values – and the foundation of Indian democracy.

In his earlier life, O’Brien was a quizmaster. It is entirely fitting that the book should end with a quiz. Among the questions is: “Which four-letter parliamentary expression has its origin in fox-hunting terminology”?

You’ll have to read the book to find out.