Laws need debating

India cannot afford another wasted Parliament session

The winter session of Parliament is due to start on November 26, and last for about a month. The last session was dominated by protests by the Opposition. The government has said it hopes Parliament will be able to transact some business this time, but that seems uncertain. The overwhelming victory of the Opposition in the Bihar Assembly elections may have given it the impression that the government is on the back foot, and that this is the time to press its advantage home. Certainly, by reducing the government's capacity to pass legislation, the Opposition has succeeded in making a party with a majority in the Lok Sabha look less strong than it is - which may have hurt the government's image with some voters and foreign investors. But, even by the Opposition's calculation, that political benefit may not be worth the strong negative impact on governance and on its own image caused by constant disruption to Parliament.

Both for its own sake and for the sake of governance, the Opposition must allow Parliament to function during the winter session. Debates and discussions are properly held on the floor of the House, rather than in television studios, on the steps of Parliament or on social media. Surely the Congress, which has led the attempts to paralyse Parliament, has noticed that its vice-president's speeches inside Parliament are usually well-received and work to counter the negative reputation that had built up around him over the past years. It will, therefore, be unwise to tempt any Speaker into draconian measures - some state Assemblies see en masse suspensions of Opposition members, and it would be dangerous to let that culture spread to Parliament. In any case, the way to consolidate the Opposition's victory in Bihar is to use the new balance of political power revealed in Bihar to squeeze legislative concessions out of the government, not to stall Parliament as before.

There is much pending legislation that must be debated and passed. In many of them, the Opposition should indeed cause the government to rethink. For example, the proposed amendment to the Whistleblowers Protection Act, 2014, effectively destroys the usefulness of that law. It removes the law's application to whistleblowers in so many ill-defined sectors as to shred the legal protections to almost nothing. Other laws need passage, but with debate and amendment. For example, there is the Prevention of Corruption (Amendment) Bill, which some in the government believe to be essential to give civil servants the freedom to take decisions, as it seeks to extend the requirement for government "consent" before prosecution of a bureaucrat to retired ones as well. However, there are other concerns with this Bill - for example, raising the minimum sentence to three years in jail, even for the most petty infraction; and the fact that individuals in the private sector are now exposed to three to seven years punishment if they are coerced into bribery. In addition, there is an odd requirement to prove "intent to enrich himself" in order to demonstrate the possession of disproportionate assets by an official - which would render the law itself too weak. The Opposition's duty is to discuss these and other points, not to prevent any and all laws from coming into force.