International Day of Democracy: Pause, breathe and reflect

Today is International Day of Democracy. Neither House of Parliament functioned for the most part last year, ostensibly due to Covid-19. The winter session of Parliament was cancelled, and the budget session earlier this year was cut short by two weeks citing Assembly elections. Question Hour was suspended in the monsoon session last year, and the functioning of parliamentary committees has remained stalled all through since the pandemic began. Not even a single bill presented and passed before either House in the last 18 months has been sent to a parliamentary committee for scrutiny. Post-second wave, when Parliament eventually did start functioning, it was disrupted frequently. Members did not allow either House to function.

On November 21 last year, the Standing Committee of the Parliament on Health had sent detailed recommendations to the government, calling for ramping up of oxygen facilities. This went unheard, and the lack of oxygen facilities during the second wave of the pandemic led to the death of citizens. Just before the second wave, the Committee on Science & Tech, Environment, Forest and Climate Change, chaired by Jairam Ramesh, recommended the government to ramp up the production of vaccines by providing increased infrastructure support. This, too, went unheard.

A narcissistic government is a troubling development for a democracy. The oft-heard refrain that there is nothing new about governments functioning in this way has some truth attached to it. However, it is the routinization of it that is becoming a growing concern. Covid was not unique to India. It has hit countries globally. Yet, governments across the world chose to deal with it maturely. They made efforts to keep democracy intact even in the most difficult of times. Italy, for instance, which suffered the most during the first wave, allowed its parliament to sit and function virtually, despite its constitution mandating the physical presence of a member to hold a session of parliament. In the UK, MPs were provided with special grants to interact with their constituents virtually. New Zealand allowed its parliamentarians to submit pre-recorded oral and urgent questions, and Germany allowed video submissions of arguments on the debate of relief package for Covid. It also placed a ballot box outside parliament for members to cast their votes and put in their suggestions. Intensive cross-party negotiations over the budget were also held in the US, which led to a broad economic support package for citizens. Sweden, Ireland and Kenya also conducted parliamentary sessions physically even when Covid was at its peak. Countries like Brazil, Spain and Czech Republic allowed parliamentary committees to function during Covid as a check against their governments.

In any democracy, it is the efforts to protect the Constitution and its values that matter. History will always be kind to those who choose to travel through the dark dense forest despite obvious dangers. There can never be a good reason to justify centralisation in a quasi-federal state which believes in co-operative federalism, or for suspending parliament in a country that believes in participatory and deliberative democracy, or for being intolerant towards those who choose to speak truth to power in a country where there is rule of law. This World Democracy Day, our Parliament needs to pause, breathe and reflect.

(The writers are students at National Law University, Visakhapatnam and National Law University, Odisha, respectively)