The on-going session of the Indian Parliament has been a
washout on all counts. The opposition has been stalling the Parliament one way
or the other, and causing loss of exchequer to the people of the country for
every day wasted without any business conducted. The problem has been more
pronounced in the Upper House of the Parliament, the Rajya Sabha, where the
members of political parties opposing the ruling party in Government are in a
majority. Such is the difficulty in getting any business done in Rajya Sabha
due to incessant stalling by the Opposition that the Finance Minister, who is
also the Leader of the Upper House, was forced to call it the ‘arrogance of
numbers’.
It is interesting to note that the Government which enjoys a
simple majority in the Lower House has in the Upper House been at the mercy of
a party that has failed to win even ten percent of the seats in the Lower
House.
This would not have been unusual or abnormal if Rajya Sabha
that was conceptualized as a representation of States in the Parliament were
actually representing the interest of the States. Given the current state of
affairs, it is perhaps time for us to relook at the composition and structure
of the Rajya Sabha for better functioning of democracy.
Rajya Sabha is designed to maintain the balance of power
between the States the Union Government, and maintain the federal character of
the country. It is important for us to analyze if Rajya Sabha is failing in
fulfilling this purpose.
There are three dimensions to this purpose of Rajya Sabha which
need close scrutiny:
- Representation of State (Chapter II, clause 80, sub-clause 4)
- Representative of States (Chapter II, clause 80, sub-clause 2)
- Balance of power between interest of States and interests of the Union Government and maintain the federal character of the country
Let us look at the first dimension and analyze whether Rajya
Sabha reflects the true representation of States. Take the example of the
states of Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Haryana, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, and Telangana
– all large states with a total contribution of 58 seats to Rajya Sabha. In all
these states the Congress Party has been wiped out with a total of only 10.4%
all legislative assembly seats available across all these states. Yet, the
Congress party currently sits on a whopping 37% of all Rajya Sabha seats
available from these states.
From Andhra Pradesh, where the party has zero members in the
legislative assembly, the Party occupies 6 Rajya Sabha seats out of a total of
11 available. If Rajya Sabha was a true representation of the aspirations the
States, then clearly Congress Party that has fallen out of favour in all these
states should not be representing them in Rajya Sabha in such large numbers. It
is only a travesty that the people of the State continue to be represented in
the Parliament by a Party they do not trust anymore. Not a good representation
of the aspiration of the States by any stretch of imagination.
Let us now see if the members representing a State in Rajya
Sabha are truly the representatives of their respective States. Consider the
example of three prominent MPs of the ruling Party in Rajya Sabha. Suresh
Prabhu is from the State of Maharashtra. Manohar Parrikar built his political
career in Goa. M. J. Akbar is a Delhi-based journalist. Yet, all of them are
elected to Rajya Sabha from Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, and Jharkhand respectively.
These people are anything but the representatives of the states they are
elected from. Our ex-prime Minister, Shri Manmohan Singh is a Rajya Sabha member
from Assam. It is claimed that he never lived in Assam. One must wonder how he
represents the wishes of the people of Assam.
If members have no linkages to the States they represent,
and if their political careers are delinked from the States they are representing,
there is no reason to believe that their actions and words in the parliament
will be driven by the interests of the States they represent. In fact, it is
much more possible for them to work towards fulfilling their own political
interests than the interests of States.
This brings us to the third dimension of the balance of
power and maintenance of the federal character of the country. Building on the
aforementioned two arguments, if the Rajya Sabha is filled with with members
who neither belong to the state nor reflect the political reality of the
people, it is conceivable that the interests of the States are heavily
compromised. A glaring example of this is the discussion on amendments to ‘Land
Bill’ being undertaken in the parliament these days. Although governments of
most, if not all, States are in favour of a toned-down version of the Land Bill
of 2013, Rajya Sabha, which is filled with non-representatives of States, has
been vehemently opposing the amendments.
There is another element to the notion of ‘balance’:
comparative balance of power among States. In the present system, larger states
get larger number of seats in the Rajya Sabha, and therefore are able to
prevail over the smaller states with lower number of representative members. A
grand total of 14 members represent the interest of eight states of India in
the North-east, while a single state of West Bengal is represented by 16 members.
Even within the north-eastern States, Assam alone is represented by seven
members. Therefore, any discussion that concerns the eastern part of India is
likely to be dominated by the State of West Bengal, or at the very least, by
the State of Assam. The voices of the people of the other States is likely to
drown unnoticed. Only seven States out of a total of 31 states and UT account
for more the half the number of seats in Rajya Sabha tilting the balance
heavily in their favour in any discussion being conducted in the House.
Surely the Indian constitution does not imply in any way
that the interests of one State are more important than the interests of
another State. Or, that smaller States must carry disadvantages vis-à-vis
larger States. If the idea was to give States a representation in parliament in
proportion to the population of the State then this objective is fulfilled by
the Lower House of the Parliament, Lok Sabha.
In the truest sense of giving every State of the Union an
equal voice, ideally, every State must send the same number of representatives
to Rajya Sabha. This model is not unheard of, and the Upper House of US
Parliament is modelled exactly like this. Secondly, to ensure that these
representatives are accountable to the people of the States they are
representing, they could be drawn from the representatives elected to the State
Assembly. These candidates can be selected by the State Legislative Assemblies through
proportional representation. This way, each party in the legislative assembly
not only has a chance of getting its member elected to the Rajya Sabha, but also by
letting people choose their representatives, the accountability of these
members to the people of their States is firmly established. Thirdly, the
tenure of Rajya Sabha membership should be fixed for the representatives of a
State, and not for the specific individual members who occupy those State
slots. Once a State elects a new legislative assembly, the composition of the Rajya
Sabha members occupying the State seats in Rajya Sabha can change and new
members be brought in.
It is time we seriously looked into these issues and brought about a well-thought out change to the structure and composition of Rajya Sabha to ensure preservation of the true interests of all the States, of the federal character of the country, and of the democratic structure of India.
Edit: There is another positive side-effect to giving equal representation to all states in Rajya Sabha. Political parties, and especially the national parties, will now be forced to take every state assembly election seriously and try to 'win' it. A political party cannot just focus on a few 'large' states with the confidence that its numbers in both houses of the Parliament will be sufficient. This will bring some of the remote small states into the national political mainstream, and will, in my opinion, naturally reduce insurgency in these areas.
