Reviving Parliament

It isn8217;t necessary to wait till the formal end of the monsoon session a few days from now to pronounce it a lost session. A host of bi...

It isn8217;t necessary to wait till the formal end of the monsoon session a few days from now to pronounce it a lost session. A host of bills bristled for MPs8217; attention when the session began 8212; from the Prevention of Money Laundering Bill, pending for nearly three years now, to the Cable Television Networks Regulation Amendment Bill 2002, passed by Lok Sabha in the Budget session and scheduled for introduction and passage in Rajya Sabha this session.

In a rare show of shared urgency, legislators across the political divide had also pledged to introduce and pass an Electoral Reforms Bill, all the better to beat back the Supreme Court8217;s initiative on disclosures by candidates. Most of these bills are now destined to be unhappy carry-overs into the winter session.

So what8217;s new? Isn8217;t it always like this? Till as far back as the eye can see, hasn8217;t every parliamentary session come to an end even before the work had really begun? To begin with, that question itself suggests an obvious answer. For a more functional, more effective Parliament, there must be more sessions, and every session must be longer in duration than it is now. But we need to ask more questions perhaps.

Why, for instance, must the first day of every session necessarily be a barren one, surrendered to obituary references? Also, why does Parliament lapse into complete silence in between sessions? The committee system, for instance, was supposed to enhance parliamentary activity, to make it more effective in terms of fine-tuning legislation and enforcing executive accountability. The reality, however, is large scale absenteeism in most committees with attendance hovering under the 50 per cent mark.

Of course, there is another more fundamental question here: even if there were to be more sessions, with greater attendance in the House and in the committees, will that, by itself, mean more work done in Parliament? Or will our parliamentarians use the extra time to create more spectacle and drama, as they did this time on the Petrol Pump Scam, even as they left the real issues that it raised untouched? The Pump Scam, excavated by this paper, only provoked them to successive walkouts. The problem, then, is not just that MPs do not seem to do enough work; it also has to do with a distorted conception of just what constitutes parliamentary work. Basically, Parliament will not become a more effective institution unless it is seen as more than a staging ground for verbal swordsplay and showdowns.

As another session dies out, most of the work undone, we need to ask why Parliament has become such a weakened institution. We need to think more seriously about bringing it back to life.