Parliament as an Institution of
Accountability is on the decline
V. Jwala Narasimha Rao
Over the years the effectiveness of Indian Parliament as an institution of accountability and supervision is on the decline. The instruments for accountability like motions on the floor, oversight powers, committee system that Parliament can use, are being rendered dysfunctional. Globalization of Indian economy eroded the power of Parliament. International treaties govern much of the economic decision making and Parliament does not have a system of effective treaty oversight in place. The decision on these treaties would have been already taken and are unalterable, by the time they come to Parliament. Parliamentary oversight on the powers which are being delegated to non-elected institutions is very weak.
These were the salient observations made by Devesh Kapur from Harvard University and Pratap Bhanu of Jawaharlal Nehru University in a study paper on the functioning of Parliament titled, “Democracy, Governance and Human Rights Programme”. The study was sponsored by United Nations Research Institute for Social Development five years ago.
Slow legislation process, more powers to executive in the form of ordinances substituting for legislation were identified as the weakness of the Indian Parliament. Parliament is increasingly becoming ineffective in providing scrutiny of the executive. The capacity and inclination MPs for attending to that modern legislation is weak. The large number of political parties in Parliament, most of which are institutionally weak, has substantially increased the barriers to collective action.
Parliament itself has self-abdicated many of its functions. The imperatives of electoral and party politics gave birth to delay an important legislation just for the sake of delay but not for any qualitative improvement in legislation. Parliament is more an oppositional space rather than a forum for genuine debate. For individual MPs, doing good work in Parliament is not linked to any political rewards, either in their constituencies or within their political parties. Parliamentary performance of an MP has no incentive. In Indian politics there is no principle as to who to enter in to politics, or about the caliber of persons likely to enter Parliament. Those charged with making laws may be law breakers themselves.
Since Independence, India has been a complex experiment in institutionalizing democratic accountability through parliamentary institutions. The country undoubtedly has sustained, against great odds, a lively, stable, multicultural and functioning democracy with regular and free elections, an independent judiciary and a vibrant civil society. India’s democratic institutions have shown remarkable endurance. Indians had great hopes that universal suffrage would produce a quiet and steady social revolution that would loosen the power structure of Indian society, ensure to all Indians the rights promised to them under the Constitution and bring about greater well-being.
It is debatable as to what extent Indian Parliament could be held responsible for the successes and failures of Indian democracy. Performance of Parliamentary Democracy is not independent of performance of Parliament. Functioning of Parliament is closely related to the functioning of other key institutions of a democracy. Performance of legislators in a parliamentary system is more an outcome of the influence of the political party to which they belong than anything else. The quality of parliamentarians, judged by their qualifications and commitment, seems to be declining. Though India’s current parliamentarians have much higher levels of formal education than in the past, sizable number among them has criminal backgrounds. This is certainly has an impact on the functioning of Parliament.
The composition of Parliament in general and in the Lok Sabha in particular, has been a reliable index of the changing political preferences of Indian voters. The social composition of Parliament has changed considerably over the years. From its inception as an elite coterie of British educated lawyers, its members today are drawn from a variety of social strata and occupations. Parliament continues to lag behind in the representation of women, and through quotas, a certain number of seats have been earmarked for historically marginalized groups, the Scheduled Castes and Tribes and this has ensured the representation of these groups in Parliament. Parliament thus is a reasonable representation of the diversity of social interests.
The “state of emergency” that Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared in 1975 was probably one of the most precarious episodes for parliamentary democracy and was not warranted by the national interest. There is also a general sense that the procedural norms that are the basis of parliamentary practice began to erode, particularly after the mid-1970s. The weakening of political parties, the multiplicity of political parties represented in Parliament, from five in the first Lok Sabha to nearly 40 subsequently as well as the changing nature of constituent services and re-election incentives have all transformed the institution of the Indian Parliament.
The primary objective of Parliament is to enact legislation, although it also has constitutional, financial and governmental powers. It is the sole body that can amend the Constitution. It is also the only body with the power to raise taxes and spend money, including the authority to pass the annual budget. The failure of the government to ensure the passage of the budget is automatically a vote of no-confidence. Finally, the Cabinet is collectively responsible to Parliament.
Parliament is the agency through which government is held accountable. The foremost mechanism of accountability is the availability of a no-confidence motion, which, if sustained, would result in the fall of the government. But, a government with a substantial majority in Parliament is unlikely to be much deterred by the introduction of no-confidence motions. The most offensive failure of Parliament to prevent abuse of executive powers occurred in 1975 when Indira Gandhi rammed resolutions approving the presidential proclamation of an internal emergency through both houses of Parliament, suspending the fundamental rights of citizens. The Congress party, then in power, voted en masse to approve the emergency proclamations by a vote of 336 to 59. Even when executive abuses of authority were as blatant as those involved in the declaration of an emergency, it proved impossible to break the ranks of a dominant majority party.
No-confidence motions can be successful only in a very limited scenario where governments have a small majority, and a small part of that constituent majority has some reason to defect to another coalition or seek a general election that would result from the dissolution of government. In the Indian case, no-confidence motions have been successful first in 1989 when the government headed by V.P. Singh was brought down, then in 1990 when the Chandrasekhar government met a similar fate, later in 1997 when the I.K. Gujral government fell and lastly in 1999 when the A.B. Vajpayee government was brought down. This ability to bring down governments through no-confidence motions should not be confused with holding government accountable to Parliament.
The opposition is the constituent part of Parliament that has the most incentive to use the statutory powers of Parliament to keep the government accountable. The principal reason that opposition parties in India do not scrutinize the day-to-day functions of government with any seriousness is that political parties are weak institutions. The ability of the opposition to function as an independent mechanism of accountability has little to do with the formal rules of Parliament.
There are various types of committees in the Indian Parliament namely standing committees like Committee on Public Accounts, the Committee on Estimates and the Committee on Public Undertakings and Ad hoc Committees which are usually appointed for a specific purpose and can be either select or joint. However, the Parliament itself tends to ignore the reports of its committees which is yet another reason for declining accountability.
Legislation in the Parliament involves three stages corresponding to three readings of a bill. After second reading, the bill may be taken into consideration and put to an immediate vote or can be referred to a select committee of the house in question or to a joint committee of both houses, or even circulated for public opinion. However, this option is almost never exercised after a bill has been introduced. Most bills are referred to select committees. A bill placed in Parliament is scrutinized clause by clause, with members also having the right to move amendments. After the third and final reading, followed by Cabinet’s approval of amendments the bill is put to vote. On passage of the bill, it is sent to the second chamber where the entire process is repeated. It is sent to the president for consent after the bill has been passed by both houses. With President’s consent, it does not become a law automatically, that can be enforced, until a notification is gazetted. This step is sometimes “forgotten”, either deliberately or otherwise, with the result that it is unenforceable.
A distinction needs to be made between the workings of Parliament as an institution and the processes that go into the making of Parliament itself. The thorny issue of campaign finance and “criminalization of politics has a decisive impact on the composition of Parliament. The formidable challenge of raising funds for elections deters many citizens from actively participating in politics. In addition, the imperatives of raising electoral financing makes parliamentarians beholden to special interests and in some cases corrupts them, distorts the legislative process and causes considerable decline in the standing of Parliament.
The number of sittings of Parliament over the years has declined. There is a sharp increase in adjournments of the house as a result of disorderly scenes and interruptions where nothing could be recorded and nobody could hear the MPs. One striking indicator of the declining reputation of Parliament is that it now often functions without the required quorum as mandated by Articles of the Indian Constitution. Due to interruptions legislative proceedings are frequently disrupted to the point where there is no option but to adjourn. The disruption can take many forms: many members speaking simultaneously, the opposition not allowing government ministers to make statements and, increasingly, rushing to the well of the house and shouting down the speaker.
There is a striking paradox that illustrates the relationship between parliamentarians and their constituency. On the one hand, it appears from surveys that parliamentarians spend most of their time attending to the affairs of their constituents. On the other hand, parliamentarians seem relatively uninterested or ineffective in utilizing grants and policies for the development of their constituencies. This is exemplified by the extraordinary failure of the Local Area Development (MPLADS) scheme. It also seems that most MPs and their constituents seem to look upon MPs primarily as distributors of patronage rather than as policy makers. MPLADS is perhaps less important than its implications for Parliament as an institution of accountability.
In an era when India’s institutions have been severely stressed, the role of Parliament is particularly significant. The implications of inaction by Parliament, both in terms of slow response to pressing national problems and a lackluster commitment to critically scrutinizing legislation, are far reaching and long term.
A key constitutional responsibility of Parliament is to exercise accountability over the executive by carefully scrutinizing the budget. Parliament’s indifference to this critical responsibility has resulted in India facing a major fiscal crisis that jeopardizes future generations. In many states, copies of the budget documents given to the legislative members are sold as waste paper without even opening the bundles.
Under the Indian Constitution, the president can, on the advice of the government and even in the absence of parliamentary legislation, promulgate ordinances to deal with matters that might arise from time to time. The purpose behind giving the president this power was to enable the government to make decisions in case of emergency or when Parliament was not in session. Typically, the use of ordinances sharply increases during periods of governmental instability. The frequent use of presidential ordinances cannot be seen other than as a way of by-passing the need to secure parliamentary approval for important legislation. While many ordinances have legitimate justifications, Parliament will have to ensure that this practice does not become a method of giving the government short-term power that Parliament would not have approved.
If Parliament is the premier representative institution through which the sovereignty of the people is given concrete expression, nowhere has that sovereignty been more at risk in recent times than in the matter of signing international treaties and incurring international obligations. As India increasingly integrates into the global order by signing treaties, joining more multilateral institutions with sanction-binding power and entering into bilateral arrangements, it is becoming increasingly clear that Parliament’s role in incurring these international obligations is quite minimal. This is despite the fact that the Constitution expressly places treaty-making powers within the jurisdiction of Parliament. Treaty-making powers were largely left to the discretion of the executive.
Parliament has not taken an active role in monitoring the executive on the matter of international treaties does not imply that the executive has been given a free hand by the legislature. In a parliamentary system with a party government, presumably no government will enter into treaties that do not have significant support within their own parties, and by implication, among the legislators. In principle, this political dynamic should function. In practice, it appears that political parties, even of the government in power, are not widely consulted. There is a great deal of secrecy surrounding international negotiations and members of most political parties admit that they learn of international treaties only after the fact.
While parliamentary democracy remains healthy there are significant institutional challenges facing Parliament.
(Source: Study Paper of United Nations Research Institute for Social Development)
