A House in disorder

For the second year running, the focus in the run-up to the Budget Session of Parliament is not on economic issues but squarely on political turmoil. After a near parliamentary washout in 2015, will 2016 be different? Or are we going to witness only essential business getting transacted while all significant legislative initiative of the government gets stalled? It is true that the annual Budget does not evoke the sort of interest it used to earlier, but the Budget Session remains important as it provides indication of fresh thinking on part of the government.

If the Budget Session is preceded by a complete lack of interest, it indicates that the government has lost faith in its capacity to play a transformative role. And that it is, instead, attempting to counterbalance the deficit by hype and hyperbole. The blame can be apportioned on the government more than the Opposition because, in India, elections are not fought on ideological and programmatic lines but on performance or lack of it of the incumbent in power. In such a scenario, it serves the Opposition parties’ cause if the ruling party has a deficit in terms of performance. The ruling party has to find a way to either circumvent it or be more persuasive.

Despite its dismal strength in the Lok Sabha, the Congress has played a parliamentary spoilsport with telling effect and has joined other Opposition parties to stall proceedings on crucial issues in the Upper House. These tactics are common and have been resorted to by the Bharatiya Janata Party when it was in the Opposition. After the BJP’s defeat in 2004, it blocked parliamentary sessions and disallowed non-essential legislative proceedings on so-called “tainted ministers” issue.

This was later overcome by clever parliamentary management — a skill the National Democratic Alliance government lacks. The same tactic was used by the NDA government, when the Congress prevented Parliament from functioning during the Vajpayee era.

The government’s failure to ensure passage of key bills in the Rajya Sabha stems partially from the fact that the relationship between the ruling party and the Congress is at its nadir. Firstly, Prime Minister Narendra Modi leaves no opportunity to attack the Gandhi-Nehru family.

For instance, even at the recent public rally in Assam where he kicked off his party’s election campaign for the forthcoming Assembly elections, Mr Modi accused “one family” of not letting Rajya Sabha function. Personalised criticism of adversaries is a successful — and useful — ploy during election campaign, but since it has become a concurrent theme of governance, the Prime Minister and his team are paying with non-cooperation from the Opposition.

Second, the BJP has questioned Rajya Sabha’s raison d’être for over a year. Finance minister Arun Jaitley — who clearly represents the government and the BJP and is among the most articulate speakers — has made two menacing claims over the past year as the government repeatedly failed to get past the Rajya Sabha and secure passage of bills it considers important and urgent for delivering achche din.

His first accusation is that the “wisdom of a directly elected House is questioned repeatedly by the indirectly elected House”. The suggestion is that the Lok Sabha has more wisdom because its members are directly elected. Party president Amit Shah also said that in a “democratic republic, the House of the People should have supremacy”. Mr Shah should remember that the supremacy exists because the Upper House does not debate money bills yet it has been designated an important position in the Indian political system.

Mr Jaitley’s second assertion is that the “Indian democracy cannot be a tyranny of the unelected and if the elected are undermined, democracy itself would be in danger”. The phrase “tyranny of the unelected” has been used in the past by almost every political party to undermine opponents. Even the BJP accused Dr Manmohan Singh of being an unelectable leader. During the hoary days of the anti-corruption movement, every representative agitator was painted as “unelectable” by mainstream political leaders.

But, fact is that Mr Jaitley lost the Lok Sabha election and yet he was inducted in the government. In contrast, when Atal Behari Vajpayee became Prime Minister in 1998, he did not appoint Jaswant Singh and Pramod Mahajan as ministers because they had both lost the general elections.

Moreover, in the Modi government, several key portfolios are held by Rajya Sabha members. Besides the finance minister, other heavyweights include: M. Venkaiah Naidu (ironically the parliamentary affairs minister), Smriti Irani, Manohar Parri-kar, Suresh Prabhu and Ravi Shankar Prasad. While “electability” of several can be questioned, it must be accepted that the Constitution grants the Prime Minister the right to choose anyone, even if s/he is not a member of either House provided they become members of either House within six months.

The Constituent Assembly debated whether India should continue the bicameral system or not. After deliberations, it gave a nod to the Upper House because, as Gopalaswami Ayyangar (member of the drafting committee of the Constitution) observed, it could “hold dignified debates on important issues” and “the role of the Upper House is merely to delay legislation which might be the outcome of passions of the moment until the passions have subsided” before clarifying that “whenever on any important matter, particularly matters relating to finance, there is conflict between the House of the people and the council of states, it is the view of the House of the People that shall prevail”. Yet, the BJP wishes the Lok Sabha to prevail completely.

Just as the government readies its legislative agenda before every Parliament session, the Opposition is well within its right to draw up its combative list. There is no dearth of such issues now: Rohith Vemula’s suicide, Arunachal Pradesh crisis and the first scent of a scam under Mr Modi where Gujarat chief minister Anandiben Patel’s daughter Anar Patel is being drawn into allegation of favoured land allotment near the Gir sanctuary. These are just the most obvious ones that could derail the upcoming Parlia-ment session.

For the sake of his government, Mr Modi may well consider “dropping in” at 10, Janpath — like his surprise visit to Lahore — with a white flag in hand and hold the angry scion in one of his customary hugs. That selfie will probably ensure smoother passage of bills in the Rajya Sabha than all his others selfies put together.