The Indian Parliament has settled into a disturbing rhythm. The founding fathers of the Constitution had crafted it for debates that are focused on the welfare of the electors, and legislation that is filtered through the wisdom of each and every elected MP.
Thursday sharp at 11 am, Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla walked up to his chair. The now-familiar crescendo, of Opposition MPs unleashing their lung power to disrupt the last six-seven hours of the proceedings, rose. Birla didn't ask them to sit. He didn't tell them to calm down. He asked everyone to stand up for the National Song. For a few minutes, the serenity of Vande Mataram echoed inside the House. And then the Speaker adjourned the House sine die, bringing the curtain down on the Monsoon Session of Parliament about seven hours before the scheduled end.
The 250-odd sq. feet, transparent-vinyl-walled porta-cabin 'media hut' in Parliament is placed at exactly the same radial distance from the old Parliament building's Gate No. 1 (past entry point for MPs) and the Makar Dwar, the entry point in the new building. It provides a ringside view of how things have transitioned and degenerated over time. For the 29th day, or the 19th sitting of the Houses, watching the MPs troop out without doing much work reminded me of what Senator Gracchus said in Director Ridley Scott's epic adventure drama, Gladiator. Gracchus had provided a cynical view of Roman politics by telling someone that the "beating heart of Rome is not the marble of the Senate; it's the sand of the Colosseum".
Each day of the now virtually-bombed and annihilated-by-disruptions Monsoon Session this year, MPs from both sides of the political fence emerged from the Makar Dwar like gladiators from the Colosseum, claiming victory. But it takes a bit of sitting back and thinking to deduce that all parties and groupings across the various divides have been managing to have their way, and that there is only one loser: the voter. Reconfirming that distraction through spectacle is more effective than political accountability and performance.
The Congressmen's Newfound Swagger
Ask any journalist covering the monsoon session of Parliament what the key takeaway of the session is, and they will tell you that in the second half of the month-long session, the stand-out element has been the Leader of Opposition, Rahul Gandhi, walking with the swagger of a winner inside or outside Parliament. This swagger has rubbed off on most Congressmen. They admit that this was in stark contrast to the session's earlier half, as not them, but the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) had stolen the headlines. The satirical platform achieved what had been mission impossible for the entire Opposition for 12 long years of the NDA rule. The Gen Z anger made the BJP leadership sack a minister right in the middle of a Parliament session. The Congress had initially stayed away from the protests. And thus, couldn't claim victory for Dharmendra Pradhan's ouster.
Rahul Gandhi entered the arena late with a foiled sit-in outside the Prime Minister's residence. Then he shifted the goalpost. For the Congressmen, that shift brought a note of triumph - and the swagger.
The CJP's trophy was Pradhan's resignation. But Rahul Gandhi and the Congress needed a more visible hit. So he picked the pellet-hit protesters, the crackdown on the protesters, Delhi Police's fumbles, and Union Home Minister Amit Shah's silence on these to build a "missing" narrative. He wanted Shah to tell the House who ordered the crackdown. The government dug its heels in. Its gladiators laid down the rules for a statement by Shah. No dialogue till there is disruption.
The remnants of the depleted INDIA bloc, after the DMK's exit and the TMC's desertions, realised the potential of the manufactured deadlock. The target was Shah - the man anointed by the BJP as 'Chanakya', the man who cracked the Article 370 code and decimated the Naxal threat.
As the monsoon session ends, Rahul Gandhi is being credited by his party as the leader who made Shah squirm. A senior Congress leader bursting with pride told me, "Shah's aura is gone". That's the trophy with which the Opposition departed from the session.
But The Government Hasn't Lost Either
The latest monsoon session is an outing the government would perhaps like to forget. On day one, it had swarms of protesters battling on the streets to reach Parliament. Within days, it had to ease out Pradhan. Its attempts to stitch the numbers for the reintroduction of the Delimitation bill have not reached fruition. Its FCRA bill has faced internal dissent, external protests, and nudges from global superpowers.
But does the government qualify to be a loser if the Opposition won?
The answer is buried in the session track. In modern conventions, the Opposition can be called a winner if a key government legislation is defeated or a session is a washout and no legislation is passed. Put these parameters on paper, juxtapose the statistics from the session, and the picture gets muddied. The victor-loser lines blur.
Understated Wins
Although the government is not walking with a winner's swagger, it has its own collection of trophies from this session. The monsoon session of Parliament may have stayed log-jammed by the Opposition, but it was not a complete washout.
The big-ticket FCRA or the Delimitation Bills may not have seen daylight, but the government managed to push through some 20-odd bills or legislation despite the din. Almost every bill listed for introduction at the start of the session was passed.
Sample this. The theme of the session was crafting a new political recipe to seduce the 'Generation Z'. With the coveted demography in focus, the Opposition couldn't disrupt the passing of the Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Amendment Bill. By bringing stricter rules against exam paper leaks, the government offered an olive branch to Gen Z. Since the Opposition was under public scrutiny, the Bill saw 11 hours of debate in the Lok Sabha and 7 hours and 14 minutes in the Rajya Sabha. The government managed to pass the Bill for renaming Kerala as 'Keralam'. The Opposition couldn't stop the BJP's pet project, The Prevention of Insults to National Honour (Amendment) Bill, which stems from declarations made in the Constituent Assembly by Dr Rajendra Prasad on January 24, 1950, stating that Vande Mataram holds a status equal to Jana Gana Mana. Then there is the shortage of judges in the Supreme Court; the government's Supreme Court (Number of Judges) Amendment Act, 2026, which increases the sanctioned strength of the Supreme Court of India from 34 to 38 judges (including the Chief Justice of India), sailed through.
But Who Lost - And How?
The government took four days after the July 20 protests to ease out Pradhan. The Opposition claimed it had a reason to disrupt the proceedings. Then, in a clever pivot, Rahul Gandhi asked Amit Shah to respond.
On the penultimate day, the Home Minister spoke. He dared the Opposition to submit a letter to the Speaker for a debate by 2 pm. "I am ready to answer the Opposition's questions on the police action." But the Opposition rejected Shah's proposal and said it was not interested in the Home Minister's "lectures".
There are reasons why the issue never got resolved. The Opposition wasn't interested in a Shah response, as it would have diluted the "weak-Home-Minister" campaign it had constructed so carefully. The government, in turn, was hesitant to field the Home Minister all these days as it knew that once Shah spoke, the Opposition's next demand would be an apology by the Prime Minister.
So, the deadlock wasn't parliamentary; it was political. But the parallel fact alongside the deadlock and disruptions is the passing of some 20-odd bills during the session. They sailed through despite the Opposition's disruptions. Initially, the Opposition's strategy involved sloganeering and holding up placards while bills were being introduced or passed. But it soon realised that on the floor of the House, the government's numerical strength mattered more than its lung power, and that the bills were being pushed and passed despite the commotion.
In the fading moments of the session, the Opposition changed tack. It started staging walkouts in the Rajya Sabha after sloganeering. That worked for both the government and the Opposition. The government got its bills, and the Opposition, its spectacle.
But when competitive street politics plays out inside Parliament, there has to be a casualty or a loser. There is empirical data to identify and prove who was the loser. Parliament, as I said, is about debate and dialogue. Legislation needs the filters of the wisdom of legislators. The government needs to be held accountable through questions from the MPs.
And did the Bills witness debates? Were questions asked? Data from the Parliament session tracker presents a distressing picture.
Let's consider a snapshot.
A Train Of Bills
A total of 20-odd Bills were passed by the time the publish button was pressed for this article. If one assumes Parliament works for six hours daily, there should have been 116 hours of work over the 19 sittings. But at the end, Lok Sabha productivity stands at 15% and Rajya Sabha at 33%. Which means by the penultimate day of the session, Lok Sabha has worked only 17.5 hours and Rajya Sabha just 37.4 hours.
So, in the Lok Sabha, around 20 Bills have been passed in 17 hours. Before presenting the distressing reality, here is a back-of-the-envelope calculation. Data show that on average, the Lok Sabha took 51 minutes to pass a Bill and the Rajya Sabha just 99.
Now, let's take the session's data compiled by PRS India, as well as notes taken by journalists covering the session. There was a day when seven bills were passed in just 36 minutes, averaging one Bill every five minutes.
The Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Amendment Bill, 2026, was introduced on July 29. It was debated for 17 hours and 34 minutes in both houses. But the Prevention of Insults to National Honour (Amendment) Bill, 2026, introduced in the Lok Sabha on July 30, was debated for a pathetic 14 minutes in the Lok Sabha and one hour in the Rajya Sabha.
The Supreme Court (Number of Judges) Amendment Bill, 2026, was moved on August 3 in the Lok Sabha. It was passed in - believe it or not - four minutes in the lower house and 21 minutes in the upper house.
On August 7, the Lok Sabha took three minutes to pass the Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises Development (Amendment) Bill, 2026. The Taxation and Other Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2026, had similar luck. In the Lok Sabha, after its introduction on August 6, it was passed in three minutes.
The Bankers' Books Evidence Bill, 2026, The Tribunals Reforms Bill, 2026, The Kerala (Alteration of Name) Bill, 2026, and The National Co-operative Development Corporation (Amendment) Bill, 2026, were passed in five, four, twelve, and ten minutes, respectively, in the Lok Sabha. The last two bills above were passed in four and ten minutes, respectively, in the Rajya Sabha.
The trend doesn't end with the two houses of Parliament underperforming or legislation being passed faster than the time taken by a group of friends to decide on a dining place. There is also the Question Hour - the people's hour when individual MPs can place on the floor of the House the problems and issues faced by the citizens, and question the government. The loss of Question Hour means the members did not get an opportunity to ask questions.
In the Lok Sabha, to date, only two questions have been asked - in 12 minutes - on July 20 and 22. Since then, not one question has been asked in the Lower House. In the Rajya Sabha, only 16 questions have been asked, in 2.3 hours. The best performance was on July 30, when six questions were asked in the Rajya Sabha and zero in the Lok Sabha.
This means to date, 17 hours and 48 minutes of the 18 hours of Question Hour have been lost in the Lok Sabha. In the Rajya Sabha, 15.3 hours have been lost.
I won't mention the crores the exchequer pays to run a session here.
So who's the net victor - or loser? The Opposition won the disruptions, the government passed legislation. Eventually, both didn't lose.
Everybody Loves A Good Disruption
In 1996, P Sainath wrote a book titled Everybody Loves a Good Drought, combining 84 articles that he had written for Times of India from 1990 to 1992, while staying in the poorest villages in the interiors of India. After following the proceedings in Parliament since 1995, I can now summarise that Every Party Loves a Good Disruption.
The Opposition has been getting to address its political constituency by disruption, stalling, and log-jamming. The government gets to have its way by passing laws that may have the stamp of Parliament but lack the sense of the House.
Voters must know the difference between the two. They need to learn that an underperforming Parliament is a threat to democracy. They need to take note that the average annual number of sitting days in the Indian Parliament has dropped from about 135 days during the first Lok Sabha (1952-57) to a sorry 55 to 68 days per year in recent terms. The 17-hour debate on the anti-paper leak legislation shows political parties are forced to debate laws when the public is watching.
The common perception is that bills don't win elections. But Parliament isn't just about the making of laws. It's about accountability and incorporating the aspirations and needs of every segment and voter.
When Question Hours Exposed Scandals
The government derives its legitimacy from the confidence of Parliament, to which it is also accountable. The accountability factor is closely linked to an MP's privilege to question the government and the government's constitutional obligation to answer the same. A Lok Sabha handbook lays down that the government is "put on trial during the Question Hour".
Voters don't feel the need to challenge the decline in the number of questions asked, as they don't even know that in the past, the Question Hour had proved to be instrumental in exposing scandals. Independent India's first major financial scam, the Mundhra scandal, was unravelled following questions raised during the Question Hour on September 4, 1957, by the Rae Bareilly MP, Feroze Gandhi. Historically, governments have loved to sacrifice the Question Hour. In 1954, the Nehru government suspended it to make time for the Hindu Marriage and Divorce Bill, 1952. In 1976, it was jettisoned for the approval of President's Rule in Tamil Nadu and Nagaland. In 2010 and 2012, it was dispensed with to make time for discussions on the price rise situation and the motion regarding FDI in the multi-brand retail sector.
Next, the government may feel content if it manages to pass laws despite the Opposition's protests. But laws cannot be a dangerous representation of the will of the majority number in Parliament. They are for the national good. Democracy is a layered entity. Voters at the base and Parliament at the top.
The trends over the last few decades indicate that political parties have become tacit conspirators in undermining Parliament, the top of the democratic pyramid. They have learnt to bypass the temple of accountable democracy and are winning elections via other means.
On April 20, 1653, Lieutenant-General Oliver Cromwell, a Parliamentary commander during the British Civil Wars, forcefully dissolved the Rump Parliament in London. He had entered with armed soldiers and ordered the MPs to depart after saying, "You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go."
We need an Oliver Cromwell moment in our Parliament.
(The author is Consulting Editor, NDTV)
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author
