IT is axiomatic that for Parliament to be truly effective, to reflect and resolve the myriad problems confronting a complex country like ours, it is the government’s responsibility to allow sensible and rounded debates and pass legislation preferably through consensus-building.
It is also the Opposition’s obligation to dissent when necessary and cooperate on issues impinging on people’s lives.
The role of those seated on both sides of the aisle in the two Houses in the just-concluded winter session can be questioned on these scores. The government, firstly, for compressing the session’s duration to just 19 days (from December 1 to 19) when past sittings went on for nearly a month. And then, allowing a long debate on a subject entrenched in the RSS-BJP’s ideological foundation but removed from people’s lives and pushing for the passage of Bills in two days. One of the Bills was ostensibly meant to score a political point over the Congress.
Outside Parliament, the issues angering people surfaced without a prod from eminent MPs, some of whom, abandoning their party affiliations, were filmed rehearsing dance steps to catchy Bollywood numbers for an industrialist-MP’s family wedding; or allegedly vaping when the session was on; or entering the Parliament complex with a stray dog in tow and barking when a question was asked of her.
Everybody loves a jolly moment in life but not when a serious air travel fiasco is happening. But for a long-awaited statement from Civil Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu in the Lok Sabha, the demand for a discussion on the aviation crisis was ignored. Delhi was enveloped by toxic air while quotidian concerns over inflation and unemployment persisted.
Did Parliament care? The government insisted on having a discussion on “Vande Mataram”, the national song which the BJP subsequently adopted as its anthem to commemorate its 150th anniversary. Taking a cue from Rahul Gandhi, the Congress stood firm on having a debate on the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, unmindful of the perception that its leader’s bugbear had not helped the Congress in the Bihar polls.
Ultimately, a discussion and debate on both subjects took place, suggesting that Parliament now functions through trade-offs.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi had tipped off his MPs about his agenda. On November 7, inaugurating an event to kickstart Vande Mataram’s milestone anniversary, he targeted Jawaharlal Nehru, alleging that under Muslim League “pressure”, Nehru dropped an “important” stanza in the song written by the poet, Bankim Chandra Chattopadhayay, in 1875.
The alleged move, Modi said, “sowed the seeds of Partition”, which remains a “challenge” for India. Congress president M Mallikarjun Kharge replied, saying that the Congress was the “proud flagbearer” of Vande Mataram, which “awakened the collective soul of the nation” and evolved into the “rallying cry” for freedom from colonial rule.
For the BJP, the “colonial” subtext is part of the narrative, but not in the way the Congress interprets it. “Colonialism” for the BJP signifies “de-colonialisation” from the vestiges of the erstwhile regime that still lie scattered among the English-speaking and elitist “Macaulay’s children”, also derisively labelled as the Hindutva-hating “secular” brigade. Alluding to reports that some Islamic clerics in Uttar Pradesh had issued an order to parents to not send their children to schools where Vande Mataram is sung, a piece in the Organiser, an RSS-aligned weekly (December 8, 2025), stated, “Perhaps it is in the chain (sic) of the learned Muslim theologians’ keenness to remind the community, from time to time, of remaining alive to various religious and cultural differences….and to keep our secular rulers on tenterhooks.”
Having exhausted the political potential contained in the three core issues of the Ram temple, curtailing Kashmir’s special status via Article 370 and a common civil code, the BJP hopes to fit Vande Mataram into the larger narrative of “minority appeasement”, especially with the West Bengal and Assam elections around the corner.
The amended Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), rechristened and passed in the winter session as the Viksit Bharat Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) Bill (now Act), 2025 or VB G-Ram-G Bill ,was another instrument to reinforce a larger political agenda. Modi had earlier dissed the MGNREGA as the “living monument of failures” of the UPA government. It appeared as though once the NDA had summoned the required numbers, the MGNREGA – commended by some western countries as one of the best guarantors of rural employment – would be tossed out of the window. Yet, under pressure from the BJP’s own members, including MPs, the government was forced to retain it, leaving it with one choice: tweak the law and rename it to reflect its ideological outlook. Hence, Ram was brought in place of Gandhi, who, at best, has token value for the RSS family.
With the discussions on Vande Mataram and electoral reforms dominating the proceedings, little time was spent in discussing and passing Bills which were done in the last two days of the session. This tactic suits the ruling party that has pushed crucial legislations through in unseemly haste. It has rarely, if ever, referred Bills to parliamentary committees, which used to be the practice.
The Higher Education Commission of India Bill, 2025 (to constitute a commission that will coordinate and determine standards in higher education and research and replace the UGC, AICTE and NCTE to simplify governance), the Sabka Bima Sabki Raksha (Amendment of Insurance Law) Bill, 2025 (meant to deepen insurance sector penetration), the law for the Sustainable Harnessing and Advancement of Nuclear Energy for Transforming India (which opens the atomic energy sector to private players) were passed in two days even though the Opposition had sought the standing committee’s scrutiny for the last one. Only the Securities Market Code, 2025 was sent to a standing committee.
Observers of Parliament’s functioning point out the relative lack of its effectiveness in recent years to the absence of a continued dialogue between the leader of the House, the PM, and the Opposition leader, Rahul Gandhi, during intervals. Is either of them interested in even having one?