A K Bhattacharya: Non-performing assets

RAISINA HILL

Parliament's performance has declined over the UPA's tenure though the last session saw an improvement.

If approval of legislative bills is used as a yardstick to judge the performance of Parliament, then the just-concluded winter session has done a reasonably commendable job. At the start of the winter session, Parliament had before it 74 pending bills. During the session, 14 new bills were introduced and 15 bills were approved by both the houses. If one takes into account the two bills that got withdrawn (as they were replaced with new ones), the total number of bills now pending before Parliament is reduced to 71. A marginal improvement, but nevertheless an achievement that Indian parliamentarians can certainly take credit for at a time when the pendency of bills till the last session was only rising.

All this becomes quite evident if one studies the data on Parliament's functioning, compiled by PRS Legislative Research, a non-government organisation. More interesting, the data also reveal how Parliament's performance in the last four years under the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) regime has steadily deteriorated. Take, for instance, the number of days for which Parliament sat in this period.

The data for 2004 is not relevant, as that was an election year. In 2005, both the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha met for 85 days each. The following year, the decline was marked. In 2006, the Lok Sabha sat for only 77 days and the Rajya Sabha also sat for the same number of days. And in 2007, the Lok Sabha had sessions on 66 days and the Rajya Sabha on 65 days.

If you go by the number of hours each House worked in these three years, the same trend is evident. In 2005, the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha sat for 490 hours and 401 hours, respectively. The following year, the number of hours the two houses spent on debates and on legislative business declined to 437 hours and 375 hours. In 2007, the performance deteriorated further to 281hours for the Lok Sabha and 217 hours for the Rajya Sabha.

For the record, the Lok Sabha is expected to work for six hours every day when in session. The expectation for the elders in the Rajya Sabha is five hours. Yet, neither of the houses met that expectation in the last four years. For the Lok Sabha, the number of average hours worked has declined from 5.8 hours in 2005 to 4.9 hours in 2007. In respect of the Rajya Sabha, the performance is worse as the average hours worked has dropped from 4.7 hours to 3.3 hours in this period.

The question that should disturb anyone is why the two houses of Parliament have been spending less and less time on their primary business. The obvious explanation is that our Parliamentarians seem to have frequently given vent to their protests through walk-outs and noisy demonstrations even within the two Houses. Live coverage of the proceedings in the Lok Sabha may have been partially responsible for this state of affairs. The net outcome of such conduct has been that the Speaker is often obliged to adjourn the session adversely affecting the smooth conduct of legislative business in the House. Equally disconcerting, as captured by the PRS Legislative Research data, is the fact that the younger members of Parliament are spending less time compared to their older colleagues in both the Houses of Parliament. It is possible that the younger MPs are not getting opportunities to take part in debates. This too, if true, should be examined.

One way to reduce the pendency of legislative bills is to review the system of getting new bills examined by the various Parliamentary standing committees. Of the 71 pending bills now, there are only nine bills that have not gone to any standing committee and that too because all of them were introduced in the just-concluded winter session of Parliament. More than 40 legislative bills have been studied by the standing committees and their reports are available with Parliament. But for some reason or the other, these bills have not been taken up for further scrutiny and approval. In respect of the remaining bills, the standing committees are yet to submit their report or have sought more time. Clearly, the ministry of parliamentary affairs can make a big difference to Parliament's track record in expediting legislative business, if only it focused on how to dispose of at least the bills on which the reports are already with it.