Vandita Mishra writes: Three days and three bills in Parliament

Discussion on a no-confidence motion played out over three days, and three consequential Bills to revamp criminal laws were introduced on the last day of the session — both framed a government determined to press deeper its imprint before a general election, an Opposition that has been rendered tongue-tied and ineffectual, a bystander to large changes, and the chilling absence between the two of the barest mutual acknowledgement, the most elementary reciprocity.

In a parliamentary democracy, the House provides the place where the twain meet. Where government and Opposition sit together and talk on issues of public interest, and where the latter asks questions to hold the former accountable. As this last week of the Monsoon session showed, however, India’s Parliament, for all the noise and to-and-fro, has become the forum for marking absences — missing from the House, most of all, is the basic civility that is a necessary prerequisite for dialogue and deliberation, and the enforcement of accountability.

The speakers in the no-trust motion said their own piece and showed no sign that they were listening to one another. The PM did not even care to be present in the House while the Opposition leaders spoke, entering it barely minutes ahead of his own speech. The Opposition staged a walk-out while he was still speaking.

Rahul Gandhi’s speech rapidly degenerated into an undifferentiated and high-pitched denunciation-cum-lament that, in effect, let the government off the hook on Manipur and other things. The PM’s response to the no-confidence motion was an over-long take-no-prisoners election speech, in which he painted the entire Opposition as doomsdayers and naysayers. It was interspersed with repeat-after-me and complete-my-sentence cues that his partymen, elected MPs in their own right, unctuously and embarrassingly jumped to.

Manipur was an absence, or only a perfunctory presence, in the House. The imminence of elections pressed down upon, and cramped, the proceedings.

In this setting, it was not surprising, perhaps, that three critically important bills to overhaul the criminal justice system — the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, Bharatiya Sakshya Bill — were introduced in Lok Sabha on the session’s last day, in the manner of a swashbuckling end-note. The bills have been referred to a standing committee but the impression — that the government used them to stun and to stupefy — was unmistakable.

An overhaul of the 164-year-old penal code is much-needed, and many of the changes do seem to take an overdue step in the right direction. But the several large claims that are being made by the government for the revamp will need to be parsed and examined more closely — that the bills decolonise the code; that they put an Indian ethos, and the Indian citizen, at the centre; that they simplify and correct inconsistencies; that they step up to changes in society, and to new technologies.

There are crucial unanswered questions. Has sedition been taken out of the code only to be brought back in by another name? Is the revamped code, like the one it seeks to replace, guilty of a go-to criminalisation? Are we putting too much of the burden of reform on law, and giving too little attention to the institutional cultures and systemic contexts in which it unfolds and operates?

Now that they are with the standing committee, the bills will hopefully receive the deliberation and debate that is their due. But in the House of Absences, can the parliamentary committee remain whole and unsinged?

In the tenure of this Parliament, the number of instances of remarks expunged has climbed, and so has the number of suspended MPs. To be sure, the decision to expunge remarks is made according to a pre-determined list of “unparliamentary” words, the presiding officer’s discretion and the specific conduct of the particular MP. But the trend is clear and disquieting: According to PRS Legislative Research, if there were about 4 instances of Opposition MPs’ remarks being expunged during the discussion on the no-confidence motion in Lok Sabha in 2018, that number climbed in the latest no-confidence debate to nearly 40.

The suspension of Opposition MPs from the House also shows a steep rise — from 15 in 2020 to 27 in 2022. In the just concluded Monsoon Session, 4 Opposition MPs were suspended in three weeks, including Congress leader in Lok Sabha, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury. The suspensions, “pending a report of the privileges committee”, are riddled with a new uncertainty.

This was also the session in which the Delhi services bill, which takes away powers from an elected government and hands them over to bureaucrats and to the Centre’s appointee, the L-G, sailed through both Houses. There could be nothing more telling about the constriction of spaces of debate in the name of the majority than the smooth passing of a bill that severely sets back progress on institutionalising the federal principle in the polity.

Ahead of Independence Day, the emasculation of an Opposition that is already low on numbers in a Parliament where the pre-eminent principle should be representation and participation and persuasion, not the will or whim of a bare-knuckled majority, is stark and glaring.

Till next week,

Vandita

Must Read Opinion from the week:

– Editorial, “Manipur needs more”, August 12

– Suhas Palshikar, “State’s strong arm”, August 12

– SY Quraishi, “The EC’s guardrails”, August 11

– Pratap Bhanu Mehta “Some laptop questions”, August 10

– Avijit Pathak, “As a teacher, I feel alarmed”, August 9