Bucking the trend of intractable stand-offs, Parliament got down to business in the monsoon session that ended on Friday. The statistics tell the story. The Lok Sabha sat for 101 per cent of its scheduled hours and the Rajya Sabha for 96 per cent, according to data from the think tank, PRS Legislative Research. India’s Parliament has a very structured, and comparatively short, daily schedule, so these numbers should normally not have been taken to be exceptional. But the tendency over the past few years towards partisan lockdowns puts the business and debate conducted in this monsoon session in gratifying relief — and gives hope that the government and the Opposition may have arrived at terms of engagement to more permanently breathe oxygen into Parliament’s necessary processes. While 14 Bills were passed, the clearance of the Constitution (122nd) Amendment Bill in the Rajya Sabha is a standout achievement. One, it finally broke the deadlock on introducing the goods and services tax, and resumed the process towards actualising reform in India’s tax administration. It thereby ticked the box on a step that has been seen to be a sign of the country’s determination in decluttering procedures that both inhibit economic progress and allow rent-seeking. Two, it broke the cycle of Opposition parties, primarily the two main national parties, obstructing legislation that they had advocated while in government. The Bharatiya Janata Party did so during UPA rule, and the Congress did it in the first sessions of NDA rule.
That the cycle has been broken goes to the credit of both parties. But if it is to be made to herald a more constructive engagement in Parliament, the government needs to go the longer mile. The Congress may have realised that a functioning legislature allows it to show that despite the debacle of 2014 it has the capacity to repurpose itself as a force of meaningful opposition in national politics. The Congress simply does not have a presence in the States the way the BJP did during UPA-II, which enabled it to cynically force adjournments repeatedly in Parliament while getting business done in the Assemblies to demonstrate its agenda. For the BJP at the Centre now, to get Parliament fully functional is especially challenging as it does not have the numbers in the Rajya Sabha. This demands that it accommodate, as any government must in a parliamentary spirit, Opposition demands for discussions on issues of the day. A sign of sincerity on the part of the government would be a demonstrable attempt to resist the temptation to overcome the numerical disadvantage in the Rajya Sabha by introducing some legislation as money bills. Fostering a bipartisan consensus on important legislation and issues is always a work in progress.
Keywords: Monsoon session, Parliament,
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