It is difficult to agree with what Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Sushma Swaraj said at a recent interactive session with a media house. Her contention was that the BJP had evolved in the last couple of months as a responsible opposition political party. Now, given the BJP’s past record, this is a debatable view, but if indeed it became a responsible party, providing constructive opposition to the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), the proof of the pudding should have been in the eating.
That is where the surprise lies. The data on the UPA government’s performance with regard to conducting its legislative business have seen a significant improvement during the last Monsoon session of Parliament. You may agree or disagree with the reason for this improvement, but this is an undeniably significant development and marks an interesting turn in the way the UPA government has been looking at its legislative agenda.
Ms Swaraj may take credit for this and attribute the improved record to BJP’s becoming a responsible opposition party. The Congress party, on its part, may claim that the government’s improved performance is due to the intrinsic merits of its legislative moves and better floor management in both the houses of Parliament. That debate is not likely to be resolved soon, but the ruling party leaders will do well to draw the right lessons if they take a closer look at the data on how Parliament functioned during the Monsoon session.
PRS Legislative Research, a division of the Centre for Policy Research, comes out with a compilation of data on how Parliament functioned at the end of each session. The print and electronic media quickly grab such research reports and highlight them if the record shows deterioration in the government’s performance in fulfilling its legislative agenda. The same alacrity, however, goes missing when the data throw up significant improvements in the government’s performance. For instance, the pathetic performance of the government in the 2010 Budget session of Parliament received wide media coverage. In sharp contrast, the improvement in the performance during the Monsoon session has gone virtually unnoticed.
The 2010 Monsoon session of Parliament began on July 26 and ended on August 31. The two houses had planned for 24 sittings each, but ended up with 26 as the duration of the session was extended by two days. This, in itself, was an improvement over the 2010 Budget session, when the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha managed only 32 sittings each, compared to their plan for 35 sittings each. This improvement also became evident in the number of scheduled hours for which the two houses worked in the Monsoon session — 94 per cent of the scheduled hours for the Lok Sabha and 100 per cent for the Rajya Sabha. In the 2010 Budget session, the lower house worked for only 66 per cent of the scheduled hours and the upper house for 74 per cent.
Longer hours of work in the Monsoon session also meant that Parliament approved as many as 24 legislative Bills, compared to only 15 in the Budget session. In other words, our parliamentarians in the Monsoon session cleared 60 per cent more Bills than what they did in the 2010 Budget session. Mind you, our parliamentarians cleared more Bills while they worked for 19 per cent less time than in the previous session. Even in terms of introduction of new laws, the government introduced 26 Bills, almost one new Bill per sitting.
The point to be noted here is that the UPA government could have managed to get more legislative Bills cleared in the Monsoon session, if only it had not wasted almost a week due to interruptions and walkouts on the questions of inflation, petroleum price increase, delays in the preparations for the Commonwealth Games and illegal mining. This is where Sushma Swaraj’s assessment of the BJP playing the role of a responsible opposition party assumes significance. Indeed, the Congress party and the BJP did come to an understanding on several knotty issues pertaining to the civil nuclear liability Bill. That is how the Bill got cleared in spite of its provoking intense controversy and opposition from different political formations.
The Congress party is not likely to forget the lessons it drew from the controversy around the civil nuclear liability Bill. It would not have lost almost a week over the nature of the debate that Parliament should have on prices, if the Congress party had addressed the BJP’s concerns separately and in advance. On many contentious legislative Bills, like the Constitution amendment needed for the introduction of the goods and services tax, the Congress party leadership may now be inclined to enter into an understanding with the BJP. This may result in policy compromises, but the country will see less of parliamentary stalemate over the government’s legislative business.
Ms Swaraj has made the first overture on behalf of the BJP. It makes sense for the Congress party to give a positive response to this offer.
