Breach and overreach

Sustained disruption needs systemic solutions

The ongoing winter session of Parliament will go down in history as an exceptional sitting, marked by a record number of suspensions of members. A total of 143 members of both houses have been suspended over the past several days. This is unfortunate, to say the least. While parliamentary discourse has generally declined over the years, the latest flashpoint between the Opposition and the Treasury Benches is the recent security breach, incidentally on the 22nd anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attack at the old Parliament building. Although individuals involved in the act have been arrested and relevant security agencies are investigating the matter, the Opposition has been demanding a statement on the issue by the Union home minister, along with a discussion.

There should be no doubt that the security breach in Parliament is a serious issue and raises several questions. The Opposition thus legitimately wants to raise the matter. Union Home Minister Amit Shah, in a recent conversation with a TV channel, talked about it. A committee has been formed to look into the issue and it will submit its report to the Lok Sabha speaker soon. In this regard, to be fair, the Opposition’s argument has merit that when Parliament is in session, the statement should have been made on the floor of the house, as is the convention. Arguably, that was all that was needed to calm things down and enable Parliament to function. While the Lok Sabha speaker will take action after the report is submitted, the incident also raised broader questions that only the government can answer.

At a deeper level, however, it is worth noting that while a record number of suspensions is making headlines, the ongoing disruption is not an isolated incident and there have been occasions when entire sessions have been washed out. Besides, the current Opposition is not the only guilty party. When the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), now the ruling party, was in the Opposition before 2014, it resorted to similar tactics. For instance, the late Arun Jaitley of the BJP was quoted as saying in 2012 that there are times when obstruction brings greater benefits to the country. The basic issue, therefore, is that the Opposition often doesn’t get enough opportunity to raise issues in Parliament that it believes are of public importance. As a consequence, the entire parliamentary process suffers. In the ongoing year, for example, the productivity of the Lok Sabha, according to the data compiled by PRS Legislative Research, in the Budget session was just 33 per cent. It increased only to 43 per cent in the monsoon session.

The unfortunate outcome of disruption becoming an integral part of the system is even important Bills are not adequately debated, and are passed in haste, with longer-term consequences for the country. For example, if Bills related to long-pending farm reforms were adequately debated, the year-long farm agitation could have been avoided, the government would not have been forced to withdraw the laws, and the farm sector would have benefited in the long run. The essence of the issue, thus, is the existing Indian parliamentary system does not give enough space to the Opposition. The government of the day gets to drive the parliamentary agenda completely. This needs to change. Today it’s a security breach; tomorrow it could be something else, and disruptions will persist.