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This chapter explores the relation between the Rajya Sabha vis-à-vis the Lok Sabha in India as well as the direction and extent to which this relation can be rethought today. It traces the development of the Rajya Sabha and its attempt to carve out a specific domain for itself. The Indian Parliament has gone through three Joint Sittings, the proceedings of which are discussed to assess the impact of the Houses on the quality and nature of the debate. The Lok Sabha has been the pulse of the vitality of Indian democracy and has refused to acknowledge the Rajya Sabha as its intellectual and cultural superior. This chapter also examines the quality of debates in the Rajya Sabha compared with the Lok Sabha, focusing on one issue: the Godhra incident, which shook the foundational principles of Indian polity and called into question the nation's policy on minorities.

This chapter examines the transformation of the social composition of the Indian Parliament over the years with focus on the 1950s, 1970s, and 1990s. The Congress, the party of governance in the first three decades after independence, followed a policy of inclusion of diverse groups and communities while selecting the representatives to the Parliament, although its active social base was made of the social, economic, and intellectual elite. By the second half of the 1960s, significant groups were disengaging themselves from such a bloc. Landlords, sections of businessmen, and orthodoxy came together in the Bharatiya Jan Sangh and the Swatantra Party and later, the middle peasantry and middle castes separated themselves from the Congress to form numerous political parties such as Bharatiya Kranti Dal, Bharatiya Lok Dal, and socialist parties of diverse hues. In the process, there was a greater devolution of power to the countryside.

This chapter looks at the in-house reproduction of the Lok Sabha in India and discusses the institutions of the speaker, opposition, and parliamentary committees. It argues that the opposition has been enormously strengthened in the 1990s while the Lok Sabha as an institution has also succeeded in domesticating the rebel and the recalcitrant by binding them into the regulatory structures of its functioning. The institution of the speaker in India needs to rediscover itself and come out of the trappings of the ruling dispensation. One of the ways by which the Parliament has built its embankments in recent years has been through the departmentally related committees. While the Lok Sabha may not sit today for as many hours as in certain earlier phases, the committees have shown the promise of pursing much work which the House as a whole undertook in earlier years.

This chapter examines the shift from national identity to plural identities that came to be reflected in the Parliament of India. In the 1980s and 1990s, many members of the Parliament increasingly ascribed to themselves religious, ethnic, cultural, and gender-related identities as their primary public concerns. In contrast, there were fervent pleas in the Constituent Assembly in defence of national identity. In the 1970s, India was in a twilight zone. While the Janata Party harboured within itself several identities and interests, the central ideological formulations of the Jayaprakash Narayan-led Movement did not bring identities necessarily to the fore. In the 1990s, pluralisms of every variety began to make their presence felt on the political scene of India. MPs were partly beholden to this upsurge and could not ignore the assertive presence of identities in the political space. The Lok Sabha witnessed a sea change during this decade.

In the 1970s, a debate emerged in India regarding the relative supremacy of the Parliament vis-à-vis the judiciary. Given the hold of the executive over the Parliament, this debate was effectively about the relative supremacy of the executive vis-à-vis the judiciary. This book first explores the crafting of the Indian Parliament as an idea and as an institution over time. It then examines the transformation of the social composition of Parliament over the years with focus on the 1950s, 1970s, and 1990s, and traces the shift that has taken place in the Parliament from 1950 to the present with regard to the idea of representation. The book also discusses the shift in language that occurred over the years as the mode of expression in the House, national identity and plural identities, the Lok Sabha in comparison with the Rajya Sabha, and in-House reproduction of the Lok Sabha.

The Indian judiciary may view itself as the custodian of the constitution and act as the balance between the contending levels and powers of a complex array of public institutions. Eventually the composition of the judiciary and sustenance of the conditions of its endurance are formulated and given concrete shape by the Parliament. The Lok Sabha is the epicentre of Parliament, and its public presence has grown enormously over the years. It was not easy for India to opt for parliamentary democracy as there was no precedence. Recent literature on Indian politics has highlighted the rise of Other Backward Classes (OBCs) to prominence from the 1980s onwards. The tendency to assert pluralism or diversity cannot be seen as an attempt to promote a notion of nationalism distanced from individual rights or a post-modern tendency of de-centring of the nation or the consequence of the global turn of Indian polity.

This chapter offers an analysis of the outcome of the Lok Sabha elections of 2009. Using aggregate data it explains the nature of the victory of the Congress party showing how the structure of competition favoured the Congress. The chapter shows that three political elements worked in favour of the Congress: coalition making, governmental performance and the leadership. It contextualizes the election outcome by discussing the trends from previous elections and the nature of party competition around 2009. It further employs survey data to demonstrate the social bases of the support garnered by different political formations. The chapter also relates the outcome to the campaign and strategies of different parties. It argues that much of the play of power takes place in conditions that are not of the making of or amenable to change by anyone and yet the centrality of political skills, prowess and wisdom in modern politics remain crucial.

This chapter examines the formation of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) and the Fourteenth Lok Sabha session following the 2004 national elections in India. It explains that while the erstwhile National Democratic Alliance (NDA) was led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the present UPA was constituted by the Congress and its allies. Unlike the last government, which had a majority in the Parliament, the Congress leads a minority government at the Centre with outside support from the Left Front and the Samajwadi Party. This chapter suggests that the thirteenth and fourteenth Parliament elections seem to have a set a pattern in shaping the outcome of the nature of the government, and argues for the inevitability of coalition government rule in India.

This chapter analyses the electoral politics of Madhya Pradesh in the context of the outcomes of the 2009 Lok Sabha elections and 2008 assembly elections .Politics in the state of Madhya Pradesh has remained by and large confined to a two-party system with some presence of other smaller political parties. Although Madhya Pradesh has a sizeable population of ST and SC and also a large middle-caste population, other political parties like BSP and SP could not galvanise the votes in their favour in elections to make any significant change in terms of seat tally. Despite expectations of a repeat of the December 2008 assembly verdict, the Congress made major gains in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections in Madhya Pradesh due to anti-incumbency against individual sitting MPs from the BJP; support for central government; under-mobilization of voters from the BJP, resulting in low voter turnout; and absence of the BJSP and underperformance of the BSP.

This chapter addresses constitutional questions that arose in the aftermath of the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) withdrawal of support to the National Front on 23 October 1990. There were four distinct issues. First, was Prime Minister V. P. Singh bound to resign from office soon after the BJP withdrew its support, or was he entitled to secure a verdict on his stewardship from the Lok Sabha? Second, if his motion of confidence is defeated in the Lok Sabha, is he entitled to dissolve the Lok Sabha in favour of a verdict of the people? What are the powers and duties of the president in such a situation? Third, is the president bound, in that event, to ask the single largest party in the Lok Sabha, the Congress(I), to form a government? Last, if the Congress(I), on being so asked, fails to drum up a majority and asks for the Lok Sabha's dissolution, is the president bound to grant it?

The chapter on parliamentary debates analyses the continuing debates about Bangladeshis that took place in the national parliament of India and how their presence was viewed and debated by different sectarian and secular regional and national political parties’ representatives. The Lok Sabha debate texts from 1971 to 2011 have been analysed in this chapter. It discusses the debates on Bangladeshi migrants before, during and after the previous NDA regime. The parliamentary debate provides a window to the readers through which it is possible to obtain a picture of what has been going on over the years in the main arena of Indian politics. It also gives a sense of the lively debates conducted by Indian politicians on the issue of Bangladeshi migration into India, the opponents and their allegations and the proponents who defended and sympathised with the migrants.

This chapter focuses on the dilemma of Indian President Shankar Dayal Sharma on whether or not to dissolve the Lok Sabha. It explains that Atal Behari Vajpayee resigned as prime minister after he failed to secure a majority in the Lok Sabha, but he refrained from advising the president to dissolve the Lok Sabha. The chapter also discusses the opinion of India's First Law Minister B. R. Ambedkar on the prerogative of the king or the head of state to dissolve parliament. It explains the pronouncement made by former British Prime Minister H. H. Asquith on this issue and the relevant work of Eugene A. Forsey titled Dissolution of Parliament.

This chapter considers whether the proposal to dissolve the Lok Sabha is the prime minister's sole prerogative, or whether it should be based on a decision by his council of ministers. It describes the case of H. D. Deve Gowda who planned to go the polls as caretaker prime minister and attempted to convince about sixty Members of Parliament to defect after he failed to secure a vote of confidence in the Lok Sabha on 11 April 199. The chapter discusses works related to the prime minister's advice for the dissolution of Lok Sabha, including Ivor Jennings' Cabinet Government, Geoffrey Marshall's Constitutional Conventions, and Eugene A. Forsey's The Royal Power of Dissolution of Parliament in the British Commonwealth.

This chapter focuses on the press communiqué issued by the Rashtrapati Bhawan on 13 March 1991, which announced the president's order, under Article 85(2)(b) of the Constitution, to dissolve the Lok Sabha. It also said that the financial provisions should be passed by the Parliament. The chapter analyzes the events leading to the resignation of Prime Minister Chandra Sekhar. It contends that the budget could be passed through a note-on-account in the Lok Sabha if there was necessary support for it, thus avoiding an ordinance in the process, even if the government does not seem to have a majority.

The political scene of West Bengal has witnessed a distinct wave of Paribartan (change) since the closing period of the last decade. Beginning with the 15th Lok Sabha Election 2009 followed by the state Assembly Election in 2011, the gradual ascendance of the All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) in the political centre stage of West Bengal has ended the more than thirty years of continued rule of the Left Front (LF) spearheaded by the Communist Party of India (Marxist). This chapter attempts to analyse the socio-political determinants of such a turnaround, exploring the social base of the LF and scrutinizing the policies of the LF government. The analysis shows that the LF, increasingly detached from its ideological standpoint, has undertaken certain policies which have contributed to the erosion of its much proclaimed social constituency. Finally, an effort has been made to locate the possible implications and concerns for democracy and democratic institutions in India.

A problematical government from the beginning, the approaching end to Janata's career became painfully apparent in June 1979 as it bled from massive defections. The government fell in July, and the tortuous course of forming a new one began. Indira Gandhi returned as prime minister following the 1980 elections, having brought down Charan Singh's government by removing the support she had earlier given him. Meanwhile, President Sanjiva Reddy was required to use his discretion in finding a viable leader of the Lok Sabha to appoint as prime minister — the first time under the Constitution that this situation had to be faced. This chapter describes the steps that President Reddy took within the political storm.

This chapter comments on the application of the sub judice rule in both the Rajya Sabha and the Lok Sabha. In December 1995, Rajya Sabha Speaker I. K. Gujra and Lok Sabha Speaker Shivraj Pati both ruled that the cases they were handling were sub judice. The Supreme Court directed the parties to refrain from giving any publicity outside but did not bar any discussion on the subject in parliament. The chapter discusses cases where the presiding officers waived the sub judice and suggests that the rules must be recast in the light of changes in British rules after 1963. It also explains a 1972 resolution which held that the sub judice rule can only be applied when there is a real and substantial danger of prejudice to the proceedings.

This chapter highlights the peculiar phenomenon of both the judiciary and the parliament at least formally and legally being allowed to continue functioning under the Emergency. It analyses the manner in which institutions—in particular the Lok Sabha—gave India a façade of parliamentarism while lawmakers were imprisoned. This fiction of remaining within the confines of legality was maintained by the regime despite the fact that judges had lost much of their independence at the hands of the executive. In fact, this gave both the judiciary and the parliament some room to function. However, this was not the case when it came to public sector undertakings, especially for the Reserve Bank of India and the banking sector. These institutions were completely controlled by the state and dependent on its whims. They were subject to nepotism and used to settle personal scores.

This chapter comments on President K. R. Narayanan's decision to dissolve the Lok Sabha on December 4, 1997. It suggests that Narayanan's action showed high sense of presidential accountability to the nation because the Rashtrapati Bhavan communiqué clarified that Congress withdrew its support to the United Front (UF) government and planned to form their own government. The chapter argues that UF's political calculations allowed it to avoid the democratic procedure of parliamentary defeat even though the dissolution was approved by all, including the Bharatiya Janata Party.