StatsGuru-20-May-2013

Taking stock of Parliament during the UPA's rule

Another Parliament session, another controversy, another set of disruptions. Has India's Parliament been getting worse over the past decade, under the United Progressive Alliance? According to Table 1, both the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha have consistently sat for fewer days than supposed to over the session. Table 2, which looks at individual sittings of Parliament, is even clearer. Whenever a new Lok Sabha comes in, there is a spurt of activity - soon replaced by a decrease in the number of sittings. Meanwhile, since the first years of the UPA, there has been a steady decline in the number of Bills passed - not even the re-election of the UPA could change that trend, though Parliament did, briefly, work more after UPA-II came in. As Tables 3 and 4 show, since the middle of the term of UPA-I, the Opposition has used the disruption of Parliament as a regular tactic - in some cases wasting 40 per cent of the session's time. With UPA-II, that tactic has accelerated; with almost all of some sessions being wasted. That this is a co-ordinated political tactic is clear from the fact that both the Rajya Sabha and the Lok Sabha show identical patterns of disruption over time. Table 5 shows how the UPA's legislative plans come to naught. Note how the planned number of Bills for passing steadily increases as UPA-II continues, but the number of those actually passed stays much smaller. The burst of planned legislation in the initial years of UPA-II are also of interest - the dwindling ambition of the government, faced with legislative gridlock from the middle of UPA-II's term, is visible in the steady decrease of that number. (Click here for tables)