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Journalism of Courage
Too many state assemblies are disabled by partisan rancour and disregard for institutional decorum
Tamil Nadu may have lived with this damaging pattern for decades,but other state assemblies also suffer similar breakdowns all too often,where intense and spectacular political disagreement crowds out debate altogether. In 2010,INLD MLAs were collectively suspended from the Haryana assembly for nine days for making objectionable remarks about the speaker,and they staged a mock-assembly where they could speak freely. In Karnataka,the same year,opposition MLAs spent a night on the floor of the House. Delhi,where the primary rivals are national parties,has also seen serial expulsions of legislators. In Gujarat,too,the opposition Congress has been suspended on several occasions. The reasons for these incidents vary,but taken together they point to the fact that debate without disruption or high-handedness has been difficult to sustain in many of our assemblies.
State legislatures are not models of public reasoning. As in Parliament as well,it appears there is more value to be extracted in grandstanding,in sparring rather than advancing an idea. There are no real electoral penalties for lacklustre performance in the assembly. National attention focuses on such incidents only intermittently. But the corrosion of these institutions has serious long-term consequences for deliberative democracy.
