At the best of times, India`s elected representatives don`t score very high in confidence polls. But even by those standards, they are passing through a crisis. Three prominent MPs - one of them a minister - are in jail and accused of being involved in some of the biggest corruption scandals in independent India`s history. The high-profile civil society movement led by Anna Hazare has harnessed the angry public mood to demand a strong Lokpal to punish corruption.
The government`s version of the Lokpal Bill, which was tabled in Parliament last week, has been rejected by Hazare. The main objection of Hazare and his supporters is to keeping the prime minister outside the ambit of the proposed anti-corruption watchdog. Hazare is perfectly within his rights to take to the streets in protest, but the debate over the Lokpal must now rightly be held inside Parliament by representatives that the people have elected. Sections of the public might be dead against the political class, but we can`t just give up on Parliament.
Nothing is likely to happen on the Lokpal Bill before the August 16 deadline set by Hazare since it will almost surely be referred to a parliamentary committee. The BJP has already made its opposition known in Parliament to the exclusion of the prime minister from the ambit of the Lokpal. But whether the political class will have anything to say about the immunity given in the Lokpal Bill to an MP`s conduct inside the House or the exclusion of a vast majority of government servants remains to be seen.
If India`s elected representatives want to restore a modicum of public trust in their leadership, they need to get their act together in the monsoon session. However, the Lokpal Bill is just one of many pieces of legislation occupying lawmakers. The Bills listed for consideration and introduction in Parliament touch on many of the critical issues facing the country: land acquisition, food security, higher education, mining and nuclear energy to name a few.
The draft Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill, which seeks to replace the British-era legislation from 1894, addresses one of the burning issues of the day. Acquisition of land has proved to be controversial all over the country and arguably led to the fall of the Left Front government in West Bengal. The long-overdue Bill, which deals with both acquisition of land and rehabilitation of displaced people, is a signi-ficant improvement on the existing legislation.
There is a slew of Bills in the area of education. The two that are particularly important are the Foreign Educational Institutions Bill and Prohibition of Unfair Practices Bill, both of which have been discussed by a standing committee and will be reintroduced in Parliament. The former will govern the entry of foreign educational institutions into India and the latter seeks to curb unfair practices such as donations or capitation fees to colleges and universities. The Food Security Bill is yet another important piece of legislation that has the laudable intention of making availability of foodgrains a right for the poor, but dramatically increases the burden of the state and promises to test the government`s leaky distribution system. The list could go on.
Parliament`s recent record does not, of course, inspire much confidence. The figures for Parliament`s productivity and the amount of time wasted in disruptions and slogan-shouting do not make for a pretty picture. Fresh in most people`s mind is the loss of the entire 2010 winter session over the setting up of a joint parliamentary committee to probe the 2G telecom scam.
It is too much to expect that in the short monsoon session, so many major pieces of legislation will be taken up. But if Parliament is to regain some of it moral authority, it must get back to doing its primary job: debating and making law. Indeed, for important legislation such as the Lokpal Bill it is absolutely necessary to debate and fine-tune laws via the parliamentary committees. Otherwise we will be saddled with bad laws for a long, long time.
Legislation, however, must also be passed within a reasonable time. We can only hope that history won`t repeat itself with the Lokpal Bill, which was first introduced in the Lok Sabha as far back as 1968 and subsequently seven more times, but has not yet made it to the statute books. For land acquisition, too, an amendment to the current legislation was introduced in 2007 during the tenure of the UPA-I government. It lapsed in 2009 only to surface once again in a substantially revised form. In the interim period, the process of land acquisition has been tied up in knots, often leading to bloody confrontations. This kind of delay is unpardonable.
It is to the credit of Anna Hazare and the group of activists around him that they have pushed the idea of a Lokpal to the top of the agenda. Now it is up to Parliament to send a message that it is serious about tackling corruption as well as legislating on other critical issues. In the first week of the monsoon session there were fewer disruptions, more debate and some sense of bipartisanship. This week the MPs have slipped back into familiar bickering. They need to get back to work. The nation is watching.
The government`s version of the Lokpal Bill, which was tabled in Parliament last week, has been rejected by Hazare. The main objection of Hazare and his supporters is to keeping the prime minister outside the ambit of the proposed anti-corruption watchdog. Hazare is perfectly within his rights to take to the streets in protest, but the debate over the Lokpal must now rightly be held inside Parliament by representatives that the people have elected. Sections of the public might be dead against the political class, but we can`t just give up on Parliament.
Nothing is likely to happen on the Lokpal Bill before the August 16 deadline set by Hazare since it will almost surely be referred to a parliamentary committee. The BJP has already made its opposition known in Parliament to the exclusion of the prime minister from the ambit of the Lokpal. But whether the political class will have anything to say about the immunity given in the Lokpal Bill to an MP`s conduct inside the House or the exclusion of a vast majority of government servants remains to be seen.
If India`s elected representatives want to restore a modicum of public trust in their leadership, they need to get their act together in the monsoon session. However, the Lokpal Bill is just one of many pieces of legislation occupying lawmakers. The Bills listed for consideration and introduction in Parliament touch on many of the critical issues facing the country: land acquisition, food security, higher education, mining and nuclear energy to name a few.
The draft Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill, which seeks to replace the British-era legislation from 1894, addresses one of the burning issues of the day. Acquisition of land has proved to be controversial all over the country and arguably led to the fall of the Left Front government in West Bengal. The long-overdue Bill, which deals with both acquisition of land and rehabilitation of displaced people, is a signi-ficant improvement on the existing legislation.
There is a slew of Bills in the area of education. The two that are particularly important are the Foreign Educational Institutions Bill and Prohibition of Unfair Practices Bill, both of which have been discussed by a standing committee and will be reintroduced in Parliament. The former will govern the entry of foreign educational institutions into India and the latter seeks to curb unfair practices such as donations or capitation fees to colleges and universities. The Food Security Bill is yet another important piece of legislation that has the laudable intention of making availability of foodgrains a right for the poor, but dramatically increases the burden of the state and promises to test the government`s leaky distribution system. The list could go on.
Parliament`s recent record does not, of course, inspire much confidence. The figures for Parliament`s productivity and the amount of time wasted in disruptions and slogan-shouting do not make for a pretty picture. Fresh in most people`s mind is the loss of the entire 2010 winter session over the setting up of a joint parliamentary committee to probe the 2G telecom scam.
It is too much to expect that in the short monsoon session, so many major pieces of legislation will be taken up. But if Parliament is to regain some of it moral authority, it must get back to doing its primary job: debating and making law. Indeed, for important legislation such as the Lokpal Bill it is absolutely necessary to debate and fine-tune laws via the parliamentary committees. Otherwise we will be saddled with bad laws for a long, long time.
Legislation, however, must also be passed within a reasonable time. We can only hope that history won`t repeat itself with the Lokpal Bill, which was first introduced in the Lok Sabha as far back as 1968 and subsequently seven more times, but has not yet made it to the statute books. For land acquisition, too, an amendment to the current legislation was introduced in 2007 during the tenure of the UPA-I government. It lapsed in 2009 only to surface once again in a substantially revised form. In the interim period, the process of land acquisition has been tied up in knots, often leading to bloody confrontations. This kind of delay is unpardonable.
It is to the credit of Anna Hazare and the group of activists around him that they have pushed the idea of a Lokpal to the top of the agenda. Now it is up to Parliament to send a message that it is serious about tackling corruption as well as legislating on other critical issues. In the first week of the monsoon session there were fewer disruptions, more debate and some sense of bipartisanship. This week the MPs have slipped back into familiar bickering. They need to get back to work. The nation is watching.
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