A vote for the sake of Parliament (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 2: Polity
Prelims level: Constituent Assembly
Mains level: Parliamentary democracy

Context

•  Might political historians write of a man who refused to be accountable for his government’s failure to provide the basic preconditions of a dignified life to citizens?
•  Or might they record his government’s refusal to deter criminals who openly bullied, maimed and murdered our own people.
•  What story history tells future generations will depend on the historian, her political vision, her interpretive skills and her commitment to the ordinary citizen who ekes out a life in want and misery?
•  Court historians will lavish praises on Mr. Modi. But even they can hardly ignore his contempt for history, for the Prime Ministers that ruled the country before him, and above all his disregard of institutions that his predecessors had built laboriously.

Questions about institutions

•  India’s Constituent Assembly witnessed a rich and informed debate on the virtues of the parliamentary versus the presidential form of government.
•  Members knew of the hijacking of Parliaments by executives, they were aware of dictatorial Prime Ministers, and they were cognisant of the fatal tendency of political parties to serve their own interests more, and those of their constituents less.
•  Yet members of the Constituent Assembly decided on a parliamentary form of government.
•  In a plural society, citizens hold diverse and sometimes contrary beliefs; they agree on some issues and they disagree on others.
•  It is only a parliamentary system of government that enables the expression of diverse and divergent opinions.
•  In legislative forums, representatives are supposed to give voice to the interests, opinions and needs of their constituents.
•  Sometimes decisions are taken, at other times backdoor negotiations lead to fragile and provisional outcomes.
•  It does not matter that decisions are provisional. In a democracy there can be no notion of a Hobbesian social contract that binds citizens in perpetuity.
•  Times change, public opinion changes, new issues arise on the horizon, older ones have to be reiterated, and those issues that have become redundant need to be abandoned and replaced by fresh thinking.

Importance of the Opposition

•  An Opposition is central to the working of a parliamentary system of government.
•  Without an Opposition, the system degenerates into one-party rule.
•  Across the postcolonial world, efforts to de-legitimise the Opposition and create a one-party state have inexorably slid into military rule, and subsequently into what western donors and academics call failed states. Pathological states can neither meet the needs of their people or institutionalise power.
•  A one-party dictatorship can hardly be the answer to din and deadlocks, it is part of the problem.
•  Failed states abdicate sovereignty, they are rendered vulnerable and dependent on transnational financial agencies, upon conditionalities imposed by funders, they are brought to their knees by international human rights organisations, and they are despised by their own people.
•  We should be critical of any call to do away with the Opposition many a postcolonial country has floundered on the rocks of one-party rule.

Text, and the practice

•  The system of parliamentary government that India adopted is complex, intricate and frustrating. But the institution represents citizens who are the locus of sovereignty.
•  This is what Parliament is for.
•  That is why it should be respected. Admittedly the Indian Parliament has not worked the way it should, but it is not the system that is flawed. In his last address to the Constituent Assembly on November 25, 1949, B.R. Ambedkar remarked presciently that the working of the Constitution does not depend wholly upon the Constitution.

Conclusion

•  It depends on the people and the political parties they set up as their instruments to carry out their wishes and their politics. How will the people of India and their parties, he asked, behave?
•  Will they uphold constitutional methods of achieving their aim?
•  It is futile to say, he concluded, the Constitution has failed without taking into consideration the role of the people and their parties.
•  We would do well to recollect his words.
•  We have to insist on the restoration of the dignity of Parliament.
•  It is a condensate of popular sovereignty.

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Prelims Questions:

Q.1) Consider the following statements:
1. The maximum gap between two sessions of Parliament cannot be more than six months.
2. The Speaker from time to time summons each House of Parliament to meet.
3. A ‘session’ of Parliament is the period spanning between the first sitting of a House and its prorogation (or dissolution in the case of the LokSabha).

Which of the above statements are correct?
(a) 1 and 2 only
(b) 1 and 3 only
(c) 2 and 3 only
(d) 1, 2 and 3

Answer: B
Mains Questions:
Q.1) Constituents must weigh their candidate’s commitment to restoring the dignity of the legislature. Critically examine the statement.