The competitive disruptions of Parliament by both the Opposition and, more surprisingly, the Treasury benches, made the recently-concluded winter session of the legislature a travesty. There were more adjournments than discussions, hardly any work was done and the session was adjourned with the widespread sentiment that we had let down the people of India. A new nadir was plumbed when duelling demonstrations by Members of Parliament (MP) on the steps of the House led to accusations of assault and injury on both sides. For many of us who were brought up to regard Parliament as the temple of our democracy, its precincts as hallowed and its procedures and conventions as sacred, this seems a betrayal of everything the institution is supposed to represent as a cornerstone of our democracy.
Why have things come to such a sorry state? One obvious reason (as in everything to do with Parliament) is precedent. The recent demise of the distinguished director, Shyam Benegal, reminded me of the time when he and I both served, as private citizens in 2007, on a round table of eminent Indians invited by then-Speaker Somnath Chatterjee to advise him in the performance of his duties. Our group, which included N.R. Narayana Murthy of 70-hour work week fame, unanimously called for strict enforcement of the rules to ensure higher standards of decorum and debate, and were promptly disabused by the Speaker of our illusions. Disruptions, he said, occurred because an outnumbered Opposition saw them as part of their democratic rights; to thwart them by invoking the rule book would be condemned by all parties, including the ruling party, as undemocratic. So suspending, let alone expelling, MPs was not an option he could easily exercise.
‘Part of convention’ now, decline of civility
Whatever the merits of this method of parliamentary protest — and, personally, it is not something I have ever cared for — it has become part of the convention of Indian parliamentary practice. Speaker of the Lok Sabha Meira Kumar, whose decency and gentility were shamefully abused by a belligerent Bharatiya Janata Party, still averred that it would be wrong to expel unruly Opposition members without an all-party consensus on doing so.
Though Speakers of the Lok Sabha Sumitra Mahajan and Om Birla have proved more willing to suspend members — Mr. Birla essentially denuded the Lok Sabha of all opposition while steamrolling several Bills through the 2023 winter session — they have usually preferred adjournment to expulsion.
A second factor is, undoubtedly, the acrimony that now prevails between the government and the Opposition. Traditionally, a sense of civility has always reigned in our politics: Atal Bihari Vajpayee loved telling the stories of Jawaharlal Nehru’s courtesy to him as a young firebrand Opposition leader, Rajiv Gandhi contriving to get him medical attention in the United States, and, most famously, P.V. Narasimha Rao sending him to Geneva as the head of the Indian delegation to a United Nations meeting on Kashmir.
Today, such episodes are inconceivable. Each side sees itself as the embodiment of righteous virtue, and the others of irredeemable evil. To the ruling party, the Opposition is “anti-national”; the Opposition in turn imagine themselves as doughty outnumbered Pandavas facing the might (and the unfair means) of the Kauravas in power. Democracy requires both sides to accept, as a presumption, the good faith of the other; on all sides of our political divides, we must believe that those on the other side also have the best interests of the nation at heart, and that our disagreements are only over how to achieve them. But in Indian politics today, government and Opposition see each other as enemies, not mere adversaries. Common ground then becomes hard to find.
It is sad that our national politics has witnessed such a breakdown in the relationship of trust that, in any democracy, ought to exist between the government and the Opposition. Both sides are equally guilty: the present ruling party was just as bad when it was in Opposition. The very BJP politicians who had argued the case for disruption — who had used sophistry to justify obstructing the work of Parliament for years in the cause of the higher principle of accountability — suddenly decided that on this issue, where you stand depends on where you sit. Now that they are sitting on the Treasury benches, disruption is wasteful and condemnable. The Opposition, once their victims, will have none of it. Those of us who attended missionary schools learned the golden rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. The new golden rule of Indian politics has become: do unto them what they did unto you.
The representative in today’s Parliament
Third, arguably, is the public’s own diminished expectations from parliamentarians. Gone are the days when skilled debaters and orators held sway on the floor of the legislature, winning public adulation (in those pre-television days) from admiring accounts of their speeches alone. A Ram Manohar Lohia, a Nath Pai, a George Fernandes, a Madhu Limaye, a Piloo Mody, or a Minoo Masani acquired political importance and stature, out of all proportion to the size of their parties, because of accounts of their verbal duels with a Nehru or an Indira Gandhi. Today there are no equivalents: while the occasional reasoned or impassioned speech enjoys a brief virality on YouTube or WhatsApp, these are few and far between, and the opportunities to deliver them are rarer still. Instead, there is a clear disconnect between electability and parliamentary performance.
People are elected or re-elected for reasons other than their ability to skewer a Minister in Question Hour or tear a government proposal apart through reasoned argument. The quality and the character of political representation has a direct correlation to the quality and the character of floor debates as well. When MPs are corralled by their Whips into breaking all the rules they are sworn to uphold, to troop into the well of the House and disrupt the proceedings through shouting and sloganeering rather than effective preparation and forensic skill, they are being judged by their leaders on qualities other than effective parliamentarianism. The talent that should be exhibited on the floor of the House is now paraded in television studios instead. The public in turn no longer judges their representatives by their performance in Parliament but by the constituent services they render and the local political weight they command. Most of the names I mentioned earlier would not find it easy to be re-elected in today’s environment.
Disruption and contempt
Parliamentary standards have been in free fall for a generation. No one is elected or defeated at the polls because of their performance in Parliament. Most MPs have limited interest in legislation and prefer to disrupt the proceedings rather than debate the principles. Meanwhile, the BJP government refuses to reach out to the Opposition and is content to ride roughshod over it to pass its Bills. Its contempt for the legislature is barely concealed. Unlike Jawaharlal Nehru, who attended Parliament daily, Prime Minister Narendra Modi barely deigns to grace the House with his presence. In the last few years, the government has been increasingly treating Parliament as a noticeboard for the announcement of its decisions and a rubber stamp for legalising them, rather than as a consultative body in a deliberative democracy.
The diminishing of Parliament in our political life is deeply damaging to our democracy. Sadly, its custodians are allowing it to be robbed of all value, to the point where the public will not miss it when it is gone. But when it is gone, what will remain of our democracy?
Shashi Tharoor is the fourth-term Congress Member of Parliament (Lok Sabha) for Thiruvananthapuram and the Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs. He is the award-winning author of 26 books and the recipient of the Sahitya Akademi award, the Crossword Lifetime Achievement Award, and other distinctions
Published – January 02, 2025 12:16 am IST
