Making Sense of the House: Explaining the Decline of the Indian Parliament amidst Democratization
| DOI | 10.1177/2321023013502907 |
| Author | Vikas Tripathi,Rahul Verma |
| Published date | 01 December 2013 |
| Date | 01 December 2013 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Military-Madrasa-Mullah Complex 153
India Quarterly, 66, 2 (2010): 133–149
A Global Threat 153
Article
Making Sense of the House:
Explaining the Decline
of the Indian Parliament
amidst Democratization1
Rahul Verma
Vikas Tripathi
Abstract
Although the Indian Parliament has witnessed progressive democratization in terms of representation
of various sections of society, it has declined as an effective institution of accountability. Unlike
in Western democracies, the decline of Indian parliament is not due to strengthening of the
executive. Ironically both the executive and the parliament in India have remained weak dur-
ing the ‘democratic upsurge’ era, while some non-parliamentary institutions have succeeded in
asserting their autonomy. We find that existing literature on Indian parliament fails in explain-
ing the paradox of declining parliamentary performance amidst its democratization. In this arti-
cle, we highlight five such paradoxes. We bring in political parties as the main explanatory variable
and argue that the changing character of political parties during the ‘democratic upsurge’ era in India
lies at the heart of this debate: the emergence of new players representing sectional interests though
increased representation of various sections of society, yet adversarial politics among these parties led
to parliament’s decline.
Keywords
Parliamentary democracy, democratic upsurge, criminalization of politics, dynastic parties, coalition
governments, decline in perception and performance of Indian parliament
Introduction
The Indian parliament (and state assemblies) faces ‘an acute deficit of perception management with its
public image at very low ebb’ (Arora, 2003, p. 36). There is indeed a perceptible decline in terms of
devaluation of parliamentary autonomy, poorer standard of debates and discussions, deterioration in the
conduct of the members, lower levels of participation and disruptions in parliamentary proceedings.2
While we acknowledge that a cost–benefit analysis of parliament’s performance on some of these
Rahul Verma is a Graduate student, Department of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley, United
States. E-mail: rahulverma@berkeley.edu
Vikas Tripathi is Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science and Public Administration, Dr. H.S. Gour
University, Sagar, Madhya Pradesh, India. E-mail: 59.vikas@gmail.com
Studies in Indian Politics
1(2) 153–177
© 2013 Lokniti, Centre for the
Study of Developing Societies
SAGE Publications
Los Angeles, London,
New Delhi, Singapore,
Washington DC
DOI: 10.1177/2321023013502907
http://inp.sagepub.com
154 Rahul Verma and Vikas Tripathi
Studies in Indian Politics, 1, 2 (2013): 153–177
indicators mentioned above is an ‘argument not just simplistic but also dangerous in the extreme’
(Arora, 2003, p. 36), we argue that legislative institutions in democracies cannot afford complacency
in the public eye. Therefore, no amount of normative defense and theoretical manoeuvring around
the idea that Indian parliament is sui generis, that is, organically linked to social churnings in Indian
democracy, can overshadow the overarching public sentiment against electoral politics in general and
politicians in particular.3
Scholars working on Indian parliament (Kashyap, 1989; Kapur and Mehta, 2006; Rubinoff, 1998;
Shourie, 2007; Surya Prakash, 1995) have long called attention to this decline in both quantitative and
qualitative terms. Though most commentators have differences in opinion on the extent of decline of the
Indian parliament, they share a striking resemblance in attributing reasons in post-1989 politics in India.
The decline in the hegemonic status of the Congress party in national politics since 1989 and the rise of
state level political parties culminating in an era of coalition governments has been often described as the
moment of decline.
Ironically, the 1990s produced a fragmented yet a more representative and inclusive parliament.
Consequently, some scholars like Shankar and Rodrigues (2011) and Arora (2003) question the adjec-
tives like ‘decline’, ‘demise’, ‘diminish’ and ‘withering’ that are commonly used to describe the Indian
parliament. They argue that ‘the signs of disorder that India’s Parliamentary System frequently displays
are in fact the consequence of its progressive democratization’ (Arora, 2003, p. 15). Contrary to formal
understanding of political institutions, Shankar and Rodrigues adopt a contextual approach to study
Indian parliament and put forward a strong normative defense by arguing that the parliament is deeply
embedded in and constrained by the developments taking place in Indian politics.
We argue that these two distinct schools of thought—‘parliamentary decline’ and ‘progressive democ-
ratization of parliament’—have a self-limiting approach as they assume a linear relationship between
legislature and executive in their frameworks of pre-coalition and post-coalition phases of Indian poli-
tics.4 While the proponents of decline assume the moment of increasing representation of various social
classes as heralding the era of political instability and ineffectiveness, the democratization thesis takes
representation to be the trump and overlooks the tensions and paradoxes characterizing the moment of
progressive democratization. We argue that the parliament (or legislative institution) in democracies
must and should remain a focal point of democratic upheavals in the society. In our view the ‘progressive
democratization’ thesis not only underestimates the multi-faceted decline in parliamentary performance
but also overlooks (almost negates) the overarching public sentiment against parliamentary institutions.
How should we understand (and measure) this decline in parliamentary performance amidst progres-
sive democratization? We argue that the existing literature has not given enough attention (and analytical
weight) to changing nature of political parties in India and thus it fails to explain the parliament’s decline
amidst weaker executive, stagnated representational possibilities and stable coalition governments. The
multiplicity of political parties in the last few decades has given voice to hitherto un-mobilized sections
of Indian society (Yadav, 2000). Although this development created more options for the electorates on
the electoral menu yet the range of choices available to citizen remained limited due to overlapping
consensus among parties on various issues (Yadav, 2004). Often there are no differences in the policy
position of the treasury benches and rhetorical argumentation from the opposition (Mehta, 2013).5
Ironically, most political parties in India during the democratic upsurge era acquired tendencies of dynas-
ticism, that is, political parties became increasingly centralized around ideas and interests of party’s
leader and his family members (Chhibber, 2012).6 Therefore, in our opinion the changing character of
political parties lies at the heart of this debate on Indian parliament.
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