Role of legislative body in India

                    I began studying about the Indian constitution for the first time in 8th standard Social Studies textbook. I found the subject Civics least interesting and always struggled to understand it. Ultimately, I had to learn the subject by heart to clear the examination. However, my opinion about this subject has changed as I learnt that it deals with the issues pertaining to bread and butter of our citizens and several issues relating to the governance issues of our country!

                   As I continue to read Civics, I noticed several paradoxes. “While the protection of law is the responsibility of judiciary why formulation of law is in the hands of legislature even when its members may come from less educated sections?” “Why age and not educational qualifications remains the criteria to represent the people of this country?” “Even when the preamble says that Bharat is a secular country, why still we are witnessing communal violence?” These are some of the questions which are arising in my mind. Of course, India is a democratic country.

                  As Abraham Lincoln defined it “Democracy is by the people, of the people and for the people”. So is it the reason why legislative body frames the laws. Yes! Our democracy is based on the presumption that the representatives will be the voices of the people whom they represent and they will pass people friendly laws! Yet one cannot be optimistic as the hierarchical mind of Indians as said by Sudheer Kakkar keeps the representatives far above the common man.

                 In the process of policy formulations for good governance, three types of knowledge are used, namely, academic knowledge, bureaucratic knowledge as well as people’s knowledge. Academic knowledge can be obtained from the academicians and bureaucratic knowledge can be gained from the bureaucrats. But what about people’s will? Rousseau’s concept of ‘general will’ is very much relevant here. However, we can’t go on asking each and every citizen about their opinion regarding every policy. Hence, under a representative government the legislature plays a major role in formulating laws. It is assumed that all the representatives possess grass-root links and hence they are aware of what the people really want.

                 Apart from that, opinions of citizens are also sought by putting the policy in the public domain through websites of the ministries. But the fact is that very few are aware about this information and extremely few contribute towards it. Now the question arises whether our legislature is really representing people’s knowledge and whether it works towards fulfilling their aspirations or for the welfare of the representatives themselves?

                Senior MPs have commented that this year’s Monsoon Session was one of the least productive sessions in the annals of Indian Parliament. As per the statistics prepared by the Lok Sabha secretariat, only 1,157 hours of sittings took place until the 12th session of the 15th Lok Sabha. This is far behind the record of the 14th Lok Sabha, which had 1,736 hours and 55 minutes of sittings. In fact, the first Lok Sabha held 677 sittings of about 3,784 hours during its 14 sessions. The scenario is no different when it comes to Rajya Sabha, the Upper House of Parliament.

                 For the first time in its history, the Upper House returned the budget sans any discussion. This only shows the lackadaisical attitude of parliamentarians who are representatives of the people. Who will bear the loss of money as well as time? Diversity of ideas should result in formulation of a policy addressing various issues and not witnessing recurring parliamentary logjams. And if Supreme Court takes up the issue due to delay in parliamentary procedure, then MPs will waste time in criticizing the apex court for not taking any action pertaining to policy formulations.

                  When the Chief Information Commissioner passed an order that all major political parties like INC/AICC, BJP, CPI(M), CPI, NCP and BSP should come under the ambit of RTI, parliament was very quick to take action to revert this order. But when the issue is concerned with people, as in case of acid attacks issue, where Supreme Court issued guidelines about regulation of acid sale before parliament or the government nobody had any objection about it.

                  As per reports, an average asset owned by a MP is around Rs. 5.8 crore and the Planning Commission sets the poverty line at Rs. 33.3 and Rs. 27.2 per day in urban and rural areas respectively even though this amount is insufficient to even fulfil the minimum quantity of calorie requirement of an individual! 

                 Criminalization of politics is one of the major issues taken up by the recent Law Commission. The Supreme Court’s order on Section 8(4) was deeply debated among the scholars as well as common man. But our legislature was in no mood to take up the issue positively and work towards decriminalization of politics. The facts show that there are 162 MPs in Lok Sabha i.e. nearly 30% (out of them 75 (14%) are charged with cases of heinous crimes) who have declared that there are pending criminal cases against them in which they may be imprisoned for more than 2 years. Can we expect good governance from them? Why don’t the political parties themselves take an initiative to cleanse our democratic institutions?

                   In this year’s monsoon session Lok Sabha sat for 73.13 hours and productivity was 58% and Rajya Sabha had a better record, sitting for 99.65 hours and clocking 80% productivity and the parliament could pass 10 Bills! The 2014 election is not far away. Country is facing severe economic crisis. Border issues are also posing major challenges for India. At this juncture, the citizens of this country really deserve more responsible representatives who will work together for the betterment of the country by taking decisive actions and not divisive actions. Hoping to see a more productive winter session this time which is commencing from December 5th!