Abstract
Ronojoy Sen, House of the People: Parliament and the Making of Indian Democracy. New Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 2022, 311 pp., ₹1,295
Studying Indian institutions is essential for assessing the functioning of the world’s largest constitutional democracy. Sen provides a comprehensive account of the cardinal role that an institution like the Indian parliament performs. Using historical institutionalism to accommodate a cultural approach, Sen traces parliamentary roots from the pre-independence era to the Constituent Assembly debates and focuses on the Lok Sabha and its role in transforming a colonized country into a truly representative democracy.
The book begins with the history of the development of parliamentary democracy in India since the reforms of the nineteenth century, and the metamorphosis of a colony into a constitutional democracy. It focuses on the post-independent era, emphasizing the amalgamation of Western and Indian styles not only in its architecture but also in its procedure. Sen showcases the journey of cultivating parliamentary tools that the members put into practice. It includes instances of discussion, debate, posing questions, adjournments, disruptions and the procedures of carrying out legislative functions.
The second chapter consists of an institutional-functional analysis of the gradual shift in legislature over the years that made parliament a more representative body in the post-independence era. The author captures the representativeness of the Indian parliament by examining its social composition and to what extent it mirrors Indian society over seven decades, using six categories to map this: age, occupation, wealth, education, gender, caste and religion. The correlation to performance in parliament uses variables of attendance; questions asked; and participation in debates. The chapter also looks at four other features of the Indian parliament: criminality, dynasticism, the number of people represented by each MP and re-election rates of incumbents. The analysis on occupation reveals interesting facts such as how the number of lawyers, journalists and educationists has decreased in the lower house, while there has been a rise in MPs classifying their occupation as agriculturalists and businessmen, industrialists and traders.
Titled Please Take Your Seat, the third chapter is dedicated to disruptions and explains how over the years there has been a significant rise in disruptions and protests in the parliament since the 1970s. This has led to reduced productivity of the House, especially with a decline in the number of sitting days of the House. Sen shows how disruptions have become a part of the normal culture, as MPs too have increasingly come to see them as standard and entrenched practice, and explains why many solutions mooted to prevent them are most likely to be ineffective. Sen suggests that the role of the Speaker is crucial when it comes to controlling the activities of the House and preventing disruptions, which are also caused by the members’ and leadership’s temperament of being non-accommodating and not listening to others. With televising disruptions of parliamentary proceedings, this is being accepted as part of India’s political culture.
The fourth chapter describes the evolution of parliamentary committees in India, tracing their origin to the Public Accounts Committee instituted under the 1919 Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms. Sen describes the changes over the decades in the number of members and control of Parliamentary committees that expanded in the era of economic liberalization in 1990 and the emergence of ‘Other Backward Classes’ (OBC) politics, and the inception of coalition government. Sen finds a link between the creation of the standing committees and the rise of disruptions in the coalition era, arguing that with a sharp decline in the parliamentary oversight of legislation and budgets, the need for committees was acutely felt. He assesses the functioning of committees in two ways: first, a statistical evaluation based on the regularity of meetings; the attendance of MPs; and output in terms of reports filed. Second, he looks beyond the numbers and assesses the functioning of the committee structure. There has also been a sharp decline in the number of bills referred to the committees in the 16th Lok Sabha, and, as Sen makes note, this can also be seen in the 17th Lok Sabha. He suggests that the main reason for this decline has been the single-party majority in the lower house that has allowed the government to bypass committees. At times, committees are helpful legislative tools because of their bipartisanship: when members are not led by party whips, committees become an appropriate forum for deliberations on various issues.
The fifth chapter on ‘Corruption, Criminality and Immunity’ focuses primarily on three key issues of accountability and transparency of parliament: first, how it has dealt with the charges of misconduct and corruption involving MPs and the controversial debate of what constitutes ‘office of profit’. Second, it looks at debates in parliament around corruption in public life, a recurrent feature of Indian politics, which opened the discourse on the necessity of an anti-corruption ombudsman, the Lokpal. Third, the author examines the issue of ‘defection’ from one party to another in order to get benefits, by explaining various parliamentary measures taken to curb corruption, using its powers to institute inquiry committees to penalize errant members.
The anti-defection law, which was aimed at checking corruption, had a deleterious impact on the freedom of individual MPs. Later on, following the intervention of civil society, the Supreme Court made it mandatory in every election to declare the criminal record as well as the financial assets of candidates.
Sen concludes the book with an account of India’s journey from its place in the global wave of democratization to the present crisis of Indian democracy and indicates the diminishing role of the parliament in the coming future due to the rise of the populist spell which generates polarization in politics by inflaming division. A discussion of the Rajya Sabha’s important debates and India’s contested legislative procedures would have improved the book.
Sen argues that Indian democracy only meets the ‘minimalist’ definition where people select government, since in recent times, India has done poorly on the other basic predicates of democracy like liberal rights of speech and association, and the rule of law. With a shrinking of the importance and space given to the opposition, the shifting nature and culture of the parliament represents how parliament has changed from House of dignified deliberations to a House of chaotic disruptions. Referring to all the talk of ‘post-democracy’ and alternate forms of representation, Sen emphasizes that parliament remains central to Indian democracy and continues to be ‘essential’ in a globalized world. However, he suggests, the current phase of one-party dominance and a powerful executive has emasculated institutions, including parliament, and could continue to do so for longer, with an irreversible impact on both India’s parliament and its democracy.