House this for debate?

If we look at the participation of Lok Sabha MPs in legislative debates, the picture is not a happy one either. In the monsoon and winter sessions of Parliament this year, just 173 MPs in Lok Sabha actually said anything on the floor of Parliament on legislative issues. During these two sessions, almost 65 per cent of MPs said nothing on the floor of the Lok Sabha on legislation.

Attendance in Parliament can be very thin even when important bills are being debated. As an example, in the case of the Contempt of Courts (Amendment) Bill, this newspaper has pointed out earlier this year that there were 21 MPs in the treasury benches and nine in the Opposition when the Bill was passed by a voice vote in Lok Sabha. Another instance occurred during the recently concluded winter session when, on December 1, the Lok Sabha was adjourned early for lack of quorum.

Many of these issues are just symptoms of a deeper malaise that afflicts our legislative process. The entire process is laden with disincentives for MPs to actually think about legislation in a serious manner. By far the most important reason for the low focus on legislation is that the role of an MP in passing legislation is rarely rewarded or punished by voters in his constituency. Thus, in strict re-electability terms, legislation has almost no impact. This is very different, for example, from the US elections, where the voting record of each Congressman is dissected carefully and publicly to understand how the person has thought through various issues, and how he has represented the concerns of his constituency.

Being an effective Lok Sabha MP can mean very hard work. To make things more difficult, MPs do not have budgets available to hire good research staff. The Parliament library offers an important service by providing, at fairly short notice, clippings of recent newspaper articles to MPs on request. But it is left to the MP to sift through the many clippings and distil his or her arguments. What is even more worrisome is that the world’s largest democracy seems to expect MPs to decide on national policy based on newspaper reports.

Most bills in Parliament are passed by a voice vote. So there is not even a record of whether a certain MP was present at the time of the passage of a bill. This seems to be an easy one to fix — the Parliament has the technology that allows MPs to push a button to vote on bills. This process would inform the public not only about the voting patterns of MPs (even if presumably along party lines), but also which MPs actually cared enough to be present at the time of the voting of a bill. At the very least, we would have a historical record of the MP’s participation and voting on bills.

Then there is an important structural issue brought in by the 1985 anti-defection law. The law states that a member of Parliament can be disqualified “…if he votes or abstains from voting in such House contrary to any direction issued by the political party to which he belongs…” This does two things. First, it takes away any incentive for individual MPs to actually want to know more about legislation, because whatever their views, they will have to vote along party lines anyway. Second, the government has no incentive to sell the merits of a bill so that the majority of MPs across party lines are actually aware of the contents of a bill and will choose to vote in favour of the bill.

Critics of the anti-defection law have long argued that dissent on bills should not result in disqualification from Parliament, and that such a stand is inherently undemocratic. In contrast to the restrictions imposed on MPs in the Indian system, in the UK in May, Tony Blair relied on the votes of individual MPs from the opposition to carry through a bill on education reform. The bill was debated for two days in Parliament. Now, when was the last time that a debate on legislation in India lasted two days?

All this does not mean that there are no MPs who are serious about legislation. But having a relatively small group of MPs think about legislation is not a desirable feature of any democracy. There is an opportunity for government and opposition MPs to actually come together and address at least the relatively easy but important issues, such as providing research assistants to MPs, and deciding that all bills will have recorded voting. This is low hanging fruit and must be done on an urgent basis.

The writer is director, PRS Legislative Research