Parliament's democratic deficit

Disruption & hastily passed laws reflect poorly on MPs

Over the years, the functioning of Parliament has been marked by so many disruptions and walkouts that these events have ceased to make the headlines. But the fierce polarisation in national politics is badly affecting productive governance, which is the hallmark of a healthy democracy. Nothing reflected this better than the productivity record of the just concluded monsoon session of Parliament. According to PRS Legislative Research, the Lok Sabha functioned for 17.5 hours, or 15 per cent of its scheduled time, and the Rajya Sabha for 37.4 hours, or 33 per cent. This makes this one of the least productive monsoon sessions in a decade. Yet, 12 Bills were passed in these truncated working-hours, many of them with no or minimal debate, raising questions about the scrutiny to which these laws were subjected.

 

Many of these Bills involved issues that are still being contested in the public discourse. For instance, the Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Amendment Bill, 2026, sought to strengthen punitive measures against exam paper leaks, prompted by youth protests in New Delhi. The Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Amendment Bill, 2026, concerned a consequential change in mining tax laws, and the Taxation and Other Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2026, involved an enabling provision to put a charge on Unified Payments Interface transactions. If the government relied on its majority to bulldoze some of the Bills, the Opposition chose to exercise its opinion in an extra-Parliamentary manner.

 

The fact is that members of Parliament (MPs) of opposing parties now routinely talk past each other. No heed was taken of the Opposition critique that the public exam Bill did not address the systemic flaws. Equally, no MP chose to object to the move to curb states’ rights to tax their mineral wealth, though rumbles of discontent are now being heard in state Capitals. These Bills could well have been referred to a joint parliamentary committee (JPC) as was done in the case of the foreign contribution Bill. But this critical institutional mechanism for greater scrutiny and consensus is being sparsely used. The PRS Legislative Research data shows that the proportion of JPC referrals dropped from 60-71 per cent in the 14th and 15th Lok Sabhas to 16-25 per cent in the 16th and 17th Lok Sabhas. The session began with 30 pending Bills. Despite the 12 Bills passed, the legislative backlog did not improve much.

 

It is worth noting that the current Opposition is not deviating from an unhealthy norm. When the Bharatiya Janata Party was in Opposition, it, too, fully flexed its disruptive powers. In the 2010 winter session, parliamentary productivity fell to its lowest ever with the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha utilising 5 per cent and 2 per cent of their scheduled time, respectively, for legislative business. The reason was the 2G telecom spectrum controversy indicting the United Progressive Alliance’s spectrum allocation policy and demands for a JPC probe. The cycle of non-constructive opposition diminishes the credibility of legislative democracy. The emergence of pressure groups such as India Against Corruption and the Cockroach Janta Party to reflect citizens’ real concerns is a symptom of this deficit. India’s MPs urgently need to get back to business.