House must get back on course

The first few sittings of the 18th Lok Sabha, and the new session of Parliament do not augur well for things to come. One of the big messages was that there was no meeting point for the two sides, nor even the vaguest of attempts by the Opposition to listen to the Prime Minister after their own representatives had spoken at length with few interruptions. This is worrying.

Ahead of the session, it was clear that an evenly poised House, albeit one where the NDA government has a clear majority in the Lok Sabha, would test the floor management skills of the treasury benches (until now, accustomed to a position of strength arising from their overwhelming numbers), but also invigorate the legislative process, adding teeth to important House panels.

But the way the debates in the first session of the House have gone, there is merit to the Prime Minister’s (PM) comment in the Lok Sabha that though the Opposition’s “ecosystem is spending day and night trying to convince people that they have defeated us”, he continues to remain in power. The Opposition MPs incessantly booing when the PM spoke in the Lower House, and then choosing to walk out in the Upper House also did not reflect well on a coalition that fought on a common platform to win sizeable representation in the same House it was now disrupting. Its numbers mean that it has a right to be heard, but the government’s numbers mean that it also has to listen.

Over the last month, the government has been keen to project that it is business as usual, both in terms of policies and personnel — and the fact that most of the Cabinet and even the Lok Sabha Speaker have been repeated, accentuates this impression. Meanwhile, the Opposition has been equally keen to flex its numbers, now higher than at any time in the past decade, to show it can now hold the ruling dispensation accountable, perhaps even block legislation.

It remains to be seen if the sound and fury of the opening gambit will set the template for the next five years. The bottom line is that respect for the opponent is necessary to engage productively in Parliament, and there wasn’t much of that on display. If the aggression on view over the past few days was a hangover of the nearly two-month-long bitter campaign, it must pass; better sense must prevail. Parliament needs robust debate and disagreement, but it cannot function meaningfully without the decorum and dignity that make it a true temple of democracy.