While the role of the legislature spans across various sectors, parliamentarians fail to deliver not because of their inability, but due to the lack of basic tools

The recent tensions between the judiciary and the executive over the National Judicial Appointments Commission Act, illustrate how our democracy is evolving. Both rungs of the Government and the judiciary are fearlessly defining their scope of influence and fighting to mark their territory. Unfortunately, while the executive and the judiciary are finding their feet, the legislature continues to remain the black sheep of the governance family that is struggling to define its presence.

In the past three years, the legislature has failed to ensure a functioning Parliament, given the effective allocation of the Member of Parliament local Area Development funds and oversight of regulatory committees like the district-level Vigilance Monitoring Committee. While still unable to fulfill existing responsibilities, Indian parliamentarians have recently had the added responsibility of adopting a “model village”. The evident failure of the legislature has also made it an easy target for criticism amongst the electorate.

Interestingly, the failure of the legislators, and specifically the parliamentarians, do not lie in their inability but in the failure of the state to provide them with basic tools. “Governance structures are such that they make it impossible for even senior parliamentarians to create real impact. We are constantly hindered by the system to do anything,” a senior Rajya Sabha member who has held several Cabinet positions, recently complained. There is much merit to their complaint.

let's take the paralysis in Parliament, for example. For the longest time, we have assumed that the unwillingness of parliamentarians to work has fuelled the protests and subsequent dismal of Parliament sessions, making the entity almost futile. But did you know that the anti-defection law was that was incorporated in the Constitution in 1985, mandates that the parliamentarians have to support the policies and actions along party lines so as to not be seen as a defectorIJ Putting in place such systems that mandates the parliamentarians to follow their leadership, cripples the opinions and capacities of individual legislators. Thus, the parliamentarians have lost their voice over the past 30 years and become poor legislators.

Though legislative and policy prominence has decreased, the parliamentarians have gained more responsibility in their developmental role. Since 1993, a pot of fund has been introduced for the parliamentarians to develop their constituency, known as the Member of Parliament local Area Development Scheme fund. Today that amount has increased to five crore rupees. MPs are expected to use this fund to initiate development programmes, most of which are expected to be in infrastructure development (as mandated by the Union Government).

“It looks from outside as if we have this wealth of resource for development, but either the party honcho expects us to allocate the money to programmes he/she thinks are important or the District Collector ties it up and doesn't process the fund allocation in due time. The MPlADS end up becoming more onerous on us and help us create very little value”, a third term parliamentarian complained. “Now, we are expected to draw from the limited funding and built model villages… is that even possibleIJ” he asked.

While the model village programme and the MPlAD are well-known programmes (and thus MPs are often subject to more criticism in these areas) there are other responsibilities for the MPs for which there is limited or no knowledge available. legislators are responsible for overseeing local committees like the Rogi Kalyan Samiti, where they monitor the performance of local district hospitals or the District Vigilance Monitoring Committee, where they oversee allocation of schemes. But with limited information on how these entities function and what is the role of the legislator, their performance is dismal. According to a recent Right to Information filed, more than 700 parliamentarians have held a total of only 67 meetings.

Thus, as is evident, the role of a legislature is far spanning across various sectors and parliamentarians are suffering to deliver in most of them. However, unlike the judiciary or the legislature, they are also not questioning their value in the governance system. The question remains: Will the legislature stay the weak third sibling in this relationship or fight to create its valueIJ

(The writer is CEO of Swaniti Initiative, which is a non-profit body that delivers development solutions to elected officials)