THE COLLAPSE OF PARLIAMENTARY DEMOCRACY.

Ankur Mishra ANUBHAVV ARORA

It is a monumental tragedy that the parliament’s suspension of more than 140 MPs by the Speaker and Chairman is still being seen merely as a political contest between the government and the Opposition. It is rather the latest expression of a radical change in the type of regime we inhabit: The collapse of parliamentary democracy.

The biggest challenge we face in acknowledging this fact is that we are still bewitched by the pseudo constitutional fa?ades of our Republic — as if the forms and processes of Parliament, rules of procedure, legal redress, constitutional morality, institutions or even the terminology of parliamentary democracy can save us. The recourse to this formal language of democracy serves increasingly to provide a constitutional veneer to what is in effect, an unconstitutional concentration of power.

The Chief Justice of India can give almost a daily lecture on constitutional morality, even as the Supreme Court loses any will to stand up for it. The ruling dispensation can, without a trace of irony, speak of parliamentary decorum, even as Parliament is effectively dead as an institution. The media speaks of this as a contest between the government and the Opposition, even as the government puts chains on the wrists of Opposition members and silences them.

The disquieting thought we have to confront is whether we are in a democracy that is instinctively now attracted by power. One might ask, why does the government have to act in such a high-handed manner? It has a parliamentary majority. It would have done the Home Minister no harm to give a textbook statement on the canister episode in Parliament. But as with many things with this government, the impunity is a point: In a democracy attracted by power rather than constitutional form, more by the personification of popular will than liberty, power will continually need to be projected. And nothing speaks of power projection more effectively than a form of constitutional impunity. In fact, one of the paradoxes of Narendra Modi is this: The more he is accused of impunity, the more his attraction grows, because the criticism ultimately acknowledges and reinforces the fact of his power, even as it seeks to question its legitimacy.