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Alarm bells for legislators

Vice-President Hamid Ansari’s call to legislators to reflect deeply on the erosion of parliamentary credibility could not have come sooner. Whether Mr. Ansari’s sage advice, given at the All-India Whips Conference in Mumbai, will be heeded is anybody’s guess, considering the unedifying track record and the routine disregard of many previous warnings — primarily from the Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee. ‘Parliamentary’ connotes civility but incivility has become the norm, with no pretext considered too slight to disrupt intelligent discourse. Redressal conferences and meetings seem to have made little difference. In September 1992, an all-India conference of presiding officers, leaders of parties, Ministers of Parliamentary Affairs and whips resolved to evolve and observe a code of conduct for legislators. This has since been reiterated on various occasions — in 1997 at the special session of Parliament to mark the golden jubilee of India’s Independence; in June and November 2001 at follow-up conferences of presiding officers; and most recently, in 2004, at a meeting of the leaders of all political parties in Parliament.

What has come of all this piety? Not much, judging from the hours lost since the 14th Lok Sabha was constituted. Between June 2004 and December 2007, the lower house lost a total of 370 hours on account of interruptions and adjournments. In the one-month-long monsoon session of 2007, it forfeited 42 hours; and in just 17 days this winter session, 20 hours. Vice-President Ansari’s practical suggestions include increasing the number of sittings from the current 81 days to 130 days in a year and sitting extra hours to compensate for time lost to disruptions. As he pointed out, the British and Canadian Parliaments are a lot more industrious, working more for than 140 days annually. The typical Indian legislator’s penchant for bedlam has left fewer and fewer hours for Parliament’s business of debating and enacting legislation. Consider this evidence. Between 1952-61 and 1992-2001, the number of Bills adopted annually declined by 18 percentage points, from 68 to 49.9. One of the paradoxes of democratic India is the gap between increased public faith in the institution of democracy and decreased public trust in the elected representatives. Unlike in the West, where the affluent and the educated tend to vote in greater numbers, in India the non-privileged and the deprived feel empowered by the act of voting. Unfortunately, as surveys have shown, this engagement does not extend to the bulk of MPs and MLAs. Should this disconnect persist, it will not be long before democracy itself is questioned by ordinary people.

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