Parliament is a difficult place: Proposal for reforms

When we Indians decry the state of our Parliament, we mostly focus on the symptoms, not the underlying causes. The undesirability of disruptions and the repeated adjournments of Parliament are obvious. It is important to shift the discussion to the root causes and possible solutions if we are to see any improvements. The first category of disruptions, involving smaller groups of MPs, will require implementing decisions that have already been taken as well as introducing certain modifications to parliamentary procedures. The second category of disruption, when large groups of MPs block parliamentary proceedings, requires deeper reform of parliament, writes Baijayant ‘Jay’ Panda in The Indian Express.

Members of the House routinely “pulled knives and guns on one another. There were shoving matches and canings, tables were flipped, inkwells and spittoons went flying.”

No, that’s not a description of India’s Parliament. Rather, it’s from an article by Joanne Freeman, an American professor of history at Yale University, describing typical behaviour in the United States Congress in the mid-nineteenth century.

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When we Indians decry the state of our Parliament, we mostly focus on the symptoms, not the underlying causes. The undesirability of disruptions and the repeated adjournments of Parliament are obvious and have been done to death. It is important to shift the discussion to the root causes and possible solutions if we are to see any improvements.

What changed in America? By the second half of the 19th century, the Industrial Revolution kicked in and transformed the US. From a country where the vast majority of the population made its living from agriculture, it went on to become the most developed economy in the world. This process was not always smooth. Neither was it uniformly “inclusive”, to use the buzzword of the decade here in India. The US had its share of labour exploitation and disproportionately wealthy robber barons. But the process did reach a point where the majority of the population described themselves as middle class.

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It is our burgeoning middle class that is most dismayed by the sub-optimal functioning of Parliament. While the growth of our middle class will gradually build pressure on legislators to adhere to better standards of public behaviour, there are specific steps that need to be taken in the meantime. To do that, it is important to understand the nature of parliamentary disruptions and deadlocks, most of which can be classified under two categories. First, many disruptions are caused by small groups of MPs who are usually grandstanding for audiences back home. The second category are deadlocks that involve large groups of MPs, sometimes even the entire opposition, as in the present dispute over whether to appoint a joint parliamentary committee on the 2G spectrum scandal.

The first category of disruptions, involving smaller groups of MPs, will require implementing decisions that have already been taken as well as introducing certain modifications to parliamentary procedures. Resolutions passed by successive presiding officers of both Houses of Parliament — that is, speakers and vice presidents— and leaders of parliamentary parties, provide the moral authority for presiding officers to have disrupters physically removed for a day or even more (the legal authority has always existed).

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The second category of disruption, when large groups of MPs block parliamentary proceedings, requires deeper reform of parliament. Take the current JPC imbroglio. The opposition’s stubbornness can be summed up in the argument, “If the largest ever allegation of malfeasance in the country’s history does not justify a JPC, then what does?” The government’s obduracy lies in the stand that “Parliamentary rules provide for JPCs to be set up by consensus. The opposition is trying to bulldoze the majority opinion. If they don’t agree with our stand, let them move a vote of no confidence.”

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Again a lesson can be taken from the US experience, where the Senate requires not a 51 per cent but a 60 per cent vote for the majority to override a filibuster, by which a member of the minority side can hold up legislation by speaking for an unlimited time. Our Parliament needs similar rule-based, not consensus, options where a significant minority — say 40 per cent as in the US Senate — should be able to press their point short of a no-confidence motion. This would take away the government of the day’s ability to dodge certain motions, or the formations of special committees like a JPC, and the country would no longer be held hostage to consensus between government and opposition.