Opinion
A Parliament floor test would serve democracy
Summary
The Modi government can easily defeat a no-confidence vote but its value as polls approach will lie in what it reveals of which party stands where in Parliament rather than rhetoric
India’s presidential-style politics in a parliamentary system, as the scenario has been since the ascent of Narendra Modi as Prime Minister, can present piquant situations. The odds of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government being ousted from power by a no-confidence vote in the Lok Sabha are negligible, given that BJP members make up more than half the House—the safety mark—and can also count on allies to crush such a motion by a ratio of over 2:1. Yet, on Wednesday the Indian National Congress sought a floor test, citing violence in Manipur among other issues, and got the backing of parties that recently joined hands with it to form a front called the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) for general elections next year. A date will soon be fixed for a division of votes whose basic outcome holds no suspense. What may seem like a waste of legislative time in the face of so many long-pending bills, though, deserves a closer look in the broader context of our democracy. We have had full-majority BJP rule for nearly a decade; i.e., with no ally-placed restraints on its ideological agenda. Now as polls draw closer, clarity over who stands on which side of the aisle in Parliament would offer the electorate a political update that rhetoric-as-usual cannot match.
That making the Modi administration defend itself in the House might draw the Prime Minister out on the matter of Manipur is not devoid of merit as an opposition ploy. The state suffered an evident breakdown of law-and-order, and fixing such a failure of governance does call for national resolve. But the way various parties vote will be under watch. It will draw the battle-lines for 2024, when the rest of us will get our ballot say. The Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS), which is not one of INDIA’s 26 constituents as a political combine, made a separate proposal for a no-confidence motion. Like many others, the BRS is a regional contender, focused only on Telangana. With a variety of regional players in the national fray, state-level rivalries inevitably influence electoral tie-ups, even causing some to swing back and forth between BJP- and Congress-led camps. Prominent members of the recently pitched ‘INDIA’ tent have been part of BJP-led coalitions in the past. The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) not only still exists, it sprang back into public view with a display of strength—and pep talk from Modi—just as opposition unity took shape and gave itself a name. The new front’s acronym spelling ‘India’ has drawn a dismissive response from the Prime Minister, who used East India Company as an example of how little names matter and drew a link between British rule and the Congress to allege an overlap in what they have subject the country to. On its part, the INDIA front is trying to shape itself as a shield for the Constitution.
We can expect a war of words to heat up as we rumble into election season. Going by the past record, loyalties could still shift. As seen before along the BJP’s path to dominance, even post-poll camp jumping could happen, so adversarial line-ups of parties are always subject to change. Yet, a floor test at this juncture would force a reckoning across the spectrum, not just on the urgency at hand—of whether all Indians have equal Constitutional cover—but also over the country’s governance by the BJP in general if not the Prime Minister in particular. The BJP has long been a “party with a difference," and what sets it apart has split Indian opinion sharply. The sooner our politicians bare their preferences, the better informed we would be.
