The Unmaking of Indian Parliament

Turbulence in Parliament is no news nowadays. It creates a sense of déjà vu. People have, in fact, stopped asking why our Parliament is not functioning because they are slowly losing interest in it. Old Parliament watchers would admit that somewhere along the way, our Parliament has lost its gravitas. Well, it can be said that Parliament too reflects the general decay that has happened in our socio-political and cultural life. The democracy that we have practised so far since Independence is at a crossroads today, and a kind of cultural conformism is taking hold of the citizens of India. They do not seem to worry about the perceptible decline of institutions of democracy any longer.

There is an inexorable surge towards a regimented, regressive socio-political order sanctioned and sanctified by religious traditions and archaic social laws. There is a very disquieting intolerance which is palpable in society, in the mood of the people, and in their social exchanges. The Indian Parliament today, in a way, reflects this transitional mood of the nation. Much of the disorder that we see here today is caused by the dialectic between a liberal, non-sectarian political culture which harks back to an enlightened, humane, all-inclusive tradition nurtured by some of the finest human beings in man’s history, and the powerful, atavistic, passion-driven, revanchist, and iconoclastic impulses. Everything that happens in the Indian Parliament today makes sense when we begin to understand this dialectic. The transitional mood of the nation rejects practically everything that has existed so far. Everything that was created in the past needs to be replaced. The Parliament building, which was built in 1927, has been looked upon as a relic of the colonial past and hence to be abandoned.

The North Block and South Block, which used to house the Prime Minister’s Office, the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Defence, etc, have been shifted to the new buildings as a part of the Central Vista project. Names of places are being changed, names of cities are being changed, and English titles of major Acts are being replaced by highly Sanskritised Hindi titles. Everything of the past is being changed to create the feeling and the mood of a new India.

So, the rules, conventions, and traditions of Parliament also need to change in tune with the new mood. The traditional view that the government and the opposition are like the two wheels of a cart, and if one breaks off, the cart will not move, is slowly being given up, and a feeling is gaining ground that the ruling party is all that matters.

The ruckus we often see in Parliament is the direct result of this attitude. Why does the opposition resort to extra-parliamentary methods to press its point? It is a manifestation of its deep frustration. It is the perennial grievance of the opposition parties in Parliament that their voice is being suppressed, and the issues that they want to be debated in Parliament are often rejected by the government and the Speaker.

A close look at the events that happened in Parliament during the past two weeks would bear this out.

Traditionally, the debate on the Motion of Thanks on the President’s Address has a large canvas, and everything under the sun can be discussed during this debate. The President’s Address itself covers the whole gamut of the government’s policies, programmes, its perspectives on national and international issues, the security scenario in our region, and our preparedness to face all kinds of military challenges emanating from enemy countries, all of which are normally covered in the Address. It may be mentioned in this context that this Address is prepared by the government, and the President merely reads it as her constitutional duty.

So, the government alone is responsible for the content of the Address. Thus, the President’s Address provides the first opportunity in the year to the Members of Parliament to take a close and critical look at the entire programmes and policies, the successes and failures of the government. In this debate, there may be harsh criticism of the government, and there may be appreciation for the success the government may have achieved in some areas of governance. It is the well-recognised role of the opposition in a democratic Parliament to expose the failure of the government. Prime Minister Nehru always welcomed such efforts of the opposition.

He used to say that he welcomed criticism of his government by the opposition because he would get to know the reality only from their speech’s and he would gain nothing from his party men who only eulogized. Nehru in fact requested. The speaker to give more time to the opposition members in the House. It is a matter of record that Nehru always made it a point to be present in the House to listen to the speeches of leaders of opposition.

In the transitional phase perhaps new norms of conduct are necessary. There is no love lost between the government and the opposition. Parliament can work smoothly only if there is some amount of mutual trust between these two sides. Trust can be created only by constantly activating the channels of communication between them. This does not seem to be happening now. In earlier times the parliamentary affairs minister used to act as a bridge between the government and the opposition. Much of the tension in the House could be relieved by the intervention of the parliamentary affairs minister who could strengthen the mutual trust. It used to be a great experience.

Respect for conventions and traditions of parliament cannot be dismissed as a relic of the colonial past and a disabling fetter. These are as important as the rules of the House and have the strength and wisdom of centuries of collective experience of legislatures. One such convention is the respect and consideration to be shown to the leader of opposition (LoP) in parliament. When the LoP wants to raise a matter in the House he is always allowed to do so by the speaker without insisting on getting a prior notice from him. Further, it is not the practice in any legislature in the world to not let the LoP speak even if his speech is extremely embarrassing or uncomfortable to the Treasury. We in India, perhaps, are not very familiar with this very civilized tradition of legislative bodies elsewhere. The alacrity shown by the Treasury Benches to get the present LoP of Lok Sabha disqualifies for life and to accuse him of indulging in anti-Indian activities is a clear proof of this.

Moving resolution for the removal of a speaker is a very unusual step which is taken recourse to only in extreme situations. It indicates an unfortunate breakdown of the opposition’s trust in the speaker’s impartiality. The most shining aspect of the parliamentary system is the trust in the impartiality of the speaker who symbolizes the collective will and wisdom of the House. Once the trust in the impartiality of the speaker breaks down it will be almost impossible to restore it. That is the reason why in most of the cases of no confidence moves made by the opposition members in the past against the speaker the collective intervention by the leaders of all political parties and the leadership of the government helped in diffusing it before it caused the House to divide. There was a realization among mature political leaders that the trust in the speaker’s impartiality was the pivot of the parliamentary system and once it is allowed to break down the systemic integrity of parliamentary democracy will be lost forever. A display of the majority in terms of number on one side of the House can never retrieve it.