It makes you wonder about India’s ‘vibrant democracy’
The recent “collapse” of question hour in the Lok Sabha was a grim reminder of how our honourable law makers are converting their “august” forum into an irrelevant and irreverent talking and shouting shop. What happens inside the two houses of parliament may be an “internal” matter, but the public can or should no longer watch the collapse of the entire parliamentary system idly. It costs about Rs 1 crore a day to run parliament. The primary function of parliament in a democracy is to deliberate on legislative business. It is the business of parliament to make government accountable to the peoples’ representatives
The question hour collapsed in the Lok Sabha as the members in whose names the questions listed for replies on the day were absent from the house. Some parties at least pretended to show that truancy among members was taken as a serious matter. It was reported that their members were being pulled up. However, many parties seemed to take it in their stride as though the absence of their members was not a matter to worry about. If political parties are at best only mildly concerned about truant members, the question hour will continue to collapse in coming years. It has become a common practice to see that whenever members or a particular party is agitated over a matter, the first expression of anger or displeasure comes in the shape of total disruption of the question hour, which is the first listed business of the day.
The first Lok Sabha had devoted nearly half its time to deliberating on legislative matters. In the previous (14th) Lok Sabha, an entire session was nearly “lost” because of protests, walkouts and wrangling. During its five-year tenure, perhaps 100,000 questions were listed for replies by ministers in the house. It may not be relevant here to recount how many of these questions were actually asked and what was the kind of responses they elicited from the ministers. About 40 per cent of important legislative matters — Bills — were passed with barely any debate in the previous house. Even the annual Budget was passed without any noticeable participation or debate by the members. The number of sittings of the house has also been constantly shrinking. Indians like to call their democracy “vibrant”; but vibrancy does not come from members showing disrespect to the temple of democracy.
Central Chronicle, Madhya Pradesh, Dec 18,
