Shashi Tharoor writes: When Parliament becomes a rubber stamp |
The winter air in New Delhi is not just thick with smog; it is increasingly heavy with the malodorous scent of a decaying parliamentary culture. The recently concluded Winter Session of Parliament has not merely been a display of legislative efficiency, as the treasury benches claim, but a dismaying masterclass in the systematic dismantling of our deliberative democracy. With the passage of high-stakes legislation — most notably the Sabka Bima Sabki Raksha (Amendment of Insurance Laws) Bill, the SHANTI (Nuclear Energy) Bill, and the Viksit Bharat-G RAM G Bill (the purported successor to the landmark MGNREGA) — the government has once again demonstrated its preference for the blunt instrument of a legislative majority over the fine-tuned machinery of parliamentary consultation.
The ruling dispensation defends these blitzkrieg tactics under the noble-sounding tagline of a “productive session”. But at what cost does this productivity come? When the velocity of governance outpaces the capacity for scrutiny, the result is not progress, but a precarious descent into an executive autocracy. Today the hallowed halls of Sansad Bhavan are treated less as a forum for the people’s representatives and more as a convenient processing plant for the cabinet’s decisions.
The numbers tell a story that no amount of ministerial rhetoric can mask. In 2024-2025, we saw the surreal spectacle of eight out of 10 introduced bills sailing through both Houses with perfunctory ease. Two of the most transformative pieces of legislation in recent memory — the Insurance Amendment Bill, which permits 100 per cent Foreign Direct Investment, and........