{"id":52326,"date":"2019-09-18T19:00:36","date_gmt":"2019-09-18T13:30:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogadmin.forumias.com\/?p=52326"},"modified":"2019-09-18T18:41:44","modified_gmt":"2019-09-18T13:11:44","slug":"7-pm-history-shows-lack-of-debate-is-a-symptom-of-majoritarianism-18th-september-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/7-pm-history-shows-lack-of-debate-is-a-symptom-of-majoritarianism-18th-september-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"7 PM | History shows lack of debate is a symptom of majoritarianism | 18th September, 2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>Context: <\/strong>Quantity\nof passing bills increased but somewhere the quality has been compromised due\nto lack of debates in Parliament.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Fact-Sheet of 17<sup>th<\/sup>\nLok Sabha:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>During the session, the\nLok Sabha worked for 281 hours, a large proportion (46 percent) of which was\nspent on discussing legislation.<\/li><li>Out of the 28 bills\nwhich were passed by Parliament, only five of them were previously examined by\na parliamentary committee.<\/li><li>The Lok Sabha set a\nrecord by passing 33 bills, which is the highest number passed in a single\nsession since 1952.<\/li><li>Out of the 33 bills\npassed, recorded voting was asked for on seven bills (or 21 percent), which was\nsignificantly higher than the share in the previous Lok Sabha.<\/li><li>On multiple occasions,\nthe Lok Sabha sat beyond 10:00 pm, against its scheduled close of business of\n6:00 pm. <\/li><li>The lower house met for\n135 percent of its scheduled hours, higher than any other session of Parliament\nin the last 20 years.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Parliament:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>A parliament is an elected system of\ngovernment. <\/li><li>The people vote for their\nrepresentatives to be elected to the parliament. And when elected, the\nparliament is then made up all those elected representatives who then guide the\ngovernment. <\/li><li>By choosing their representatives, the\npeople form the government and participate in the decision-making process,\nthereby upholding democracy.<\/li><li>The parliament of India is the absolute\nlegislative authority. And it consists of the two main houses-the Lok Sabha and\nthe Rajya Sabha. <\/li><li>The Lok Sabha represents the house of\nthe people and the Rajya Sabha represents the council of the states. Both these\nhouses are presided over by the President of India.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Some\nof the functions of the parliament:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong>Law-Making\nFunctions: <\/strong>The parliament\u2019s main function, as the absolute\nlegislative authority, is to build fair and strong laws relating to all main\nunion matters or matters enumerated in the union list. <\/li><li>The members of either house bring\nproposals for new bills and laws before the parliament. The members of the\nparliament then deliberate and debate on the proposal. The parliament of India\npasses the bill or law when both houses agree and the president gives his\/her\nconsent.<\/li><li><strong>Monitoring\nthe Cabinet: <\/strong>As mentioned earlier, the parliament of India\nconsists of both the representatives of the people and the council of states.\nAnd these members form the cabinet, which is the guiding force that powers the\ngovernment. All these representatives or cabinet members have important\nministries such as finance, defence, and home under their control.<\/li><li><strong>Constitutional\nAmendments: <\/strong>The parliament of India has the power to amend the\nconstitution. To pass a constitutional amendment, both houses need to approve\nthe amendment with a majority or total membership. In some cases, the\namendments may need the approval of half of the legislative assemblies of the\nstates.<\/li><li><strong>Judicial\nFunctions: <\/strong>Another very important duty of the parliament is to\nmonitor the&nbsp;judiciary system. The judiciary body is presided over by the\nPresident. And if the need arises, the parliament has exclusive rights to\nimpeach the President and remove the judges of the Supreme Court and the High\ncourts. The parliament also needs to ensure that no member defames or insults\nthe parliament house.<\/li><li><strong>Financial\nFunctions: <\/strong>The parliament needs to enact the budget and decide\non ways and means to earn revenue for the public sector. Now the main source of\nrevenue is taxes. And the parliament needs to ensure that this revenue, when\nsanctioned for expenditure, is earmarked and spent on valid and authorized\npurposes. To this effect, the parliament has two standing committees to ensure\nthat the cabinet uses the money judiciously\u2014Public Accounts Committee and the\nEstimates Committee.<\/li><li><strong>Electoral\nFunctions: <\/strong>All parliament members are responsible for electing\nthe President and Vice-President of India. They are also responsible for\nelecting the speaker, the deputy speaker, and the deputy chairman.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Recent\ndeliberations in Parliament:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong>Inadequate Scrutiny Of Legislation: <\/strong><ul><li>A majority of bills did not benefit from detailed deliberations and scrutiny of parliamentary committees. <\/li><li>Some of these were bills like the Companies Amendment which re-categorises certain offences as civil defaults and was widely criticised for providing criminal punishment for defaults by companies related to their CSR obligations. <\/li><li>Another one was the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code Amendment Bill, which specifies minimum payout to operational creditors and limits the time-period for completing insolvency resolution proceedings.<\/li><li>Out of the 28 bills which were passed by Parliament, only five of them were previously examined by a parliamentary committee.<\/li><li>The rest of the bills were passed by simply debating them for approximately three and a half hours each, on the floor of the House.<\/li><\/ul><\/li><li><strong>Stance Put On Record:<\/strong><ul><li>Bills in Parliament are usually passed by a voice vote, unless recording of votes is constitutionally required. <\/li><li>This session witnessed a new and welcome trend where MPs called for recorded voting on contentious bills, like Triple Talaq, J&amp;K Reorganisation and amendments to the RTI Act.<\/li><li>This forced political parties to publicly declare their stand on contentious issues.<br> Out of the 33 bills passed, recorded voting was asked for on seven bills (or 21 percent), which was significantly higher than the share in the previous Lok Sabha.<\/li><\/ul><\/li><li><strong>Quantity Versus Quality<\/strong><ul><li>On multiple occasions, the Lok Sabha sat beyond 10:00 pm, against its scheduled close of business of 6:00 pm. <\/li><li>Question Hour, which in earlier Lok Sabha\u2019s was consistently disrupted, also functioned smoothly, with a record number of questions being answered orally by ministers in both houses.<\/li><li>Parliament\u2019s responsibility, however, goes beyond working for long hours and passing a record number of bills. The focus should also be on in-depth scrutiny of important legislative issues brought before it.<\/li><\/ul><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Conclusion:\n<\/strong>The history of parliamentary democracy from\nacross the world shows that when any political party gets a huge majority,\nthere is a temptation to acquire an authoritarian posture and one of the most\nobvious features of the same is to set aside quality deliberation by pushing\nlegislation in haste under the cover of \u201cmood of the nation\u201d. A\nmajoritarian parliament is different from majority in the parliament. Majority\nin parliament gains legitimacy through deliberation but in a majoritarian\nparliament, numbers trump every other moral consideration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As the dust\nsettles on the first session of Parliament, attention should move to how we can\nmeasure the quality of a legislature\u2019s functioning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Source: <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/indianexpress.com\/article\/opinion\/columns\/parliament-jammu-kashmir-reorganisation-bill-triple-talaq-6004343\/\">https:\/\/indianexpress.com\/article\/opinion\/columns\/parliament-jammu-kashmir-reorganisation-bill-triple-talaq-6004343\/<\/a><strong><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Context: Quantity of passing bills increased but somewhere the quality has been compromised due to lack of debates in Parliament. Fact-Sheet of 17th Lok Sabha: During the session, the Lok Sabha worked for 281 hours, a large proportion (46 percent) of which was spent on discussing legislation. Out of the 28 bills which were passed&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/7-pm-history-shows-lack-of-debate-is-a-symptom-of-majoritarianism-18th-september-2019\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">7 PM | History shows lack of debate is a symptom of majoritarianism | 18th September, 2019<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":49370,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[130,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-7-pm","category-public","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/7-PM.png?fit=1000%2C500&ssl=1","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1704791488},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52326\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}