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Saturday, Dec 11, 2004

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PARLIAMENT LIVE

WHEN HE TOOK charge as Speaker of the 14th Lok Sabha, Somnath Chatterjee, India's senior-most parliamentarian, promised to bring order and discipline to a House that seemed without hope so far as the conduct of several of its members was concerned. Evidently, the 10-term Communist Party of India (Marxist) Member of Parliament underestimated the disruptive power of the flock that was now under his regulatory authority. His first experience as presiding officer was stressful, with the Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party driving him to despair with rude interruptions and personal attacks followed by the boycott of the House committees and the Finance Bill. Although the BJP has behaved in more `parliamentary' fashion this winter session, party MPs are clearly restive and there are indications that a new offensive could begin soon. Not that the treasury benches have set exemplary standards. A case in point is the war of words between Lalu Prasad and Ram Vilas Paswan. While the duo has been careful not to quarrel within the precincts of the House, as Cabinet Ministers bound by the principle of collective responsibility they ought to have known better than to quarrel at all. In the event, the spat has become a point of contention in the Lok Sabha, leading to the now familiar story of pandemonium, walkout, and the Speaker's last resort — adjournment.

Legislative disorderliness is not peculiar to Sansad Bhawan. Improbable as it may seem, the Mother of all Parliaments is quite relaxed about allowing its members freedom to interrupt and spar with each other. Indeed a House of Commons fact-sheet titled "Some traditions and customs" describes the Commons chamber as a "rather noisy place with robustly expressed opinions, many interventions, expressions of approval or disapproval and sometimes repartee and banter." To be sure, the British Lower House frowns on "insulting, coarse or abusive" language and disallows anyone, however untruthful, from being called a "liar." (Winston Churchill famously substituted "terminological inexactitude" for the proscribed word.) And yes, there seems to be no Westminster equivalent of the Indian walkout, and the unique and patentable phenomenon known as "jumping into the well." Ironically, the latter practice is expressly prohibited by a "code of conduct" the Lok Sabha adopted for its members in November 2001. That Mr. Chatterjee came close last week to naming three MPs for this transgression shows such codes are easier adopted than enforced.

It is against this background that the Speaker's proposal to have parliamentary proceedings telecast live by Doordarshan gains importance. Will this have a salutary effect on all MPs? Will they be more decorous knowing they are being watched? Or will they be tempted to play to the gallery? Legislative proceedings are telecast live in the United States and in the United Kingdom. In 1979, the U.S. cable television industry created C-SPAN, a private, non-profit company dedicated to offering live television coverage of the proceedings of the House of Representatives. The House of Commons toyed with the idea in the early 1980s but faced resistance from members who felt concerned that MPs would address the public rather than the Chair. There was also some apprehension that the cameras would focus on drama rather than on substantive discussion. By 1989, the first experimental broadcasts started. Today BBC has a channel (BBC Parliament) committed to live, unedited coverage of Parliament. Has the live coverage done any public good? In a recent survey done for C-SPAN among select political scientists, 96 per cent were in agreement that televised coverage of the House debates "was the best decision for the public." Speaker Chatterjee should be pleased to hear that.

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