GRAND EDIFICES, FAILING FRAMEWORKS – Major General Rajiv Edwards, VSM** (retd)
GRAND EDIFICES, FAILING FRAMEWORKS
At the foundation stone laying and ground breaking ceremony for the new Parliament House on 10 December 2020, the Prime Minister had stated that, ‘if the old Parliament House gave direction to post-independence India, the new building would become a witness to the creation of Atma Nirbhar Bharat.’ It has been almost three years since proceedings kicked off in the new Sansad Bhavan, but the building’s architectural splendour has yet to be matched by the ‘atma-niyantran’ (self control) and ‘atma sanyam’ (self moderation/restraint) of those who operate from its precincts. Regrettably, far from serving as a forum for accelerating India’s journey towards ‘Atmanirbhar’ and ‘Viksit Bharat’, the Parliament is increasingly mirroring an Elizabethan bear garden and not a hall of serious and substantive debate.
At independence, India adopted the British ‘Westminister’ model of parliament – a framework originally designed to shackle the absolute power of the Crown, by subjecting the executive to constant legislative oversight. Paradoxically, over the decades, a combination of factors, including strict party discipline via the Anti Defection Law and the centralisation of political authority have resulted in the executive accumulating so much influence that it now mirrors the vast, unchecked authority that the Westminister system was originally designed to dismantle. Although executive dominance over the legislature has a long historical precedent that hit a nadir during the Emergency, contemporary productivity metrics highlight a bleak reality today. Data from the recently concluded Monsoon Session reveals an all-time low in parliamentary productivity. This decline is driven by a dual systemic failure; an increasingly dominant executive countered by an opposition using disruptions and walkouts as its primary, retaliatory tools.
Ideally, institutional maturity should improve as a democracy consolidates. However, the Indian Parliament shows the reverse trend. A historical analysis of parliamentary functioning in the world’s largest democracy at ‘80’, reveals a large number of structural deficiencies including a steep decline in parliament’s annual sitting days from an average of 120 to 135 days during the 1950 and 60s, to an abysmal 55 to 65 days in recent years. This presents a notable democratic paradox because, while India’s electorate has steadily matured, the country’s main law making body seems to have lost direction.
Yet another paradox is that while the educational credentials of parliamentarians have risen steadily, institutional decorum and the quality of legislative debate have correspondingly deteriorated. Today, parliamentary discourse has degenerated into unprecedented acrimony, defined by below-the-belt attacks, divisive communal remarks, character assassination, disruptive sloganeering, misogynistic slurs, and other manifestations of gutter politics. Amidst this chaos, the role of the Hon’ble Speaker is routinely reduced to that of an unheeded primary school teacher. This is a very poor and uninspiring example for the youth of the country. All measures to empower the nation’s massive demographic dividend fall short without a foundation of character building and moral values. By displaying toxic behaviour on the floor of Parliament, politicians are failing to give them the moral compass they need to become responsible citizens.
Parallel to this behavioural decline is a regressive fixation characterised by squandering of valuable legislative time on settling the scores of bygone eras and effectively converting the Parliament from a laboratory for the future into a battleground for historical whataboutry. This archival deflection is routinely weaponised, as a convenient smoke screen to divert public attention from governance deficits, leaving pressing national issues unaddressed. Ultimately, this obsession with post-mortems and posthumous defamation is a profound drain on the time and resources of a nation aspiring to achieve developed nation status.
An underperforming Parliament is only part of the problem. The real tragedy is political tribalism. Blinded by fierce partisan loyalties, citizens have cocooned themselves in ideological silos, passionately defending the legislative misconduct of their preferred political factions and chosen leaders, instead of holding them accountable. In so doing, voters become the defenders of bad governance, giving leaders a license to govern with impunity, secure in the knowledge that their loyal base will re-elect them. One wonders when the citizenry will awaken to the reality that unquestioned fidelity to a political brand, no matter the party, comes at the direct expense of the nation’s future. A mature democracy requires an audience that demands substance, not spectacle.
The new parliament building is estimated to cost about Rs 1200 crore. Across both houses, it’s operating cost is about Rs 2.5 lakh per minute – translating to Rs 1.5 crore per hour and Rs 9 crore for every single sitting day. Public outrage over parliamentary washouts highlights a stark truth about who actually pays for this gridlock. While a mere 2 to 3 percent of citizens pay personal income tax, the financial loss of a stalled session hurts the entire population. Because the remaining majority funds the exchequer through indirect taxes like GST, no citizen is insulated from this massive fiscal drain. Every Indian is paying the price for this political dysfunction – an expenditure which a developing economy can ill afford.
Ultimately, a nation’s democratic health is measured by the transparency and accountability of its governance institutions, not the grandeur of its edifices. The architecture of our inherited parliamentary model – along with its procedural rules and constitutional amendments are seemingly sound; it’s ineffectiveness stems largely from sustained systemic misuse. Consequently, reviving it requires reshaping the legislative mindset and political psyche, alongside targeted corrective amendments. This prompts the question: who will break this cycle? Change seldom originates from within an entrenched establishment. Are the lawmakers waiting until the societal cost of disruption triggers overwhelming public outrage to force their hand? Or will it take a youth-led resurgence to spearhead change? Until then, the grand structure of the new ‘Sansad Bhavan’ risks degrading from a crucible of democracy into a mere tourist attraction, while its foundational purpose is forgotten. Change is no longer optional; it is a national imperative for the transformation of Bharat.
(Major General Rajiv Edwards, VSM** (retd) is a historical researcher and commentator on societal issues. He is apolitical. Views expressed are personal)
