Finance Bill’s Hasty Passage Shows BJP’s Disregard for Democracy

In the world’s largest democracy, the govt unilaterally decided to spend nearly Rs 90 lakh crore without debate.

On 1 February, it took Finance Minister Arun Jaitley 108 minutes to read out his Budget proposals for 2018-19. Between sips of water, he described what taxes, cesses and surcharges you’ll pay and how the government will spend that money, and then some, through 12 months beginning 1 April.

Then Parliament went into a three-week ‘recess,’ when lawmakers from all parties scrutinised every aspect of the Budget to debate these when the session resumes.

Since 5 March, when Parliament started again, the Lok Sabha has been rocked by legislators demanding answers from the government on contentious issues like the Nirav Modi-Mehul Choksi scam that has shaken global confidence in our banks.

No Room for Discussion, Debate

Then on 14 March, the Parliament took exactly 30 minutes, less than 28 percent of the time Jaitley had spent on his speech, to approve of all taxation and spending proposals. Not one item about 21 tweaks to tax laws and hundreds of pages detailing sarkari spending was debated by lawmakers directly elected to the Lower House of Parliament.

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This procedure of bulldozing complex legislation through the Lok Sabha is called the ‘guillotine.’ It is named after the (erstwhile) ‘favourite’ instrument of the French to ‘enforce weight-loss’ – by cutting one’s head from the rest of the body. The lawmakers’ guillotine, enforced by the Speaker, simply groups some or all of legislation into one bunch and gets it passed (in haste) by a voice vote.

The guillotine is routinely applied to parts of the Budget, but normally, important changes to taxes or spending of ministries like defence, rural development, external affairs, home, water resources, and so on, which are important or big spenders, are scrutinised and debated at length.

Since last year, finances of the Railways (India’s biggest employer and a big spender) have been part of the general Budget. It’s where finances also chugged into the guillotine.

So, in supposedly the world’s largest democracy, the government has unilaterally decided to spend nearly Rs 90 lakh crore without a word of explanation or discussion.

Death Knell for Democracy

The Opposition, naturally, calls this the “murder of democracy.” In some ways, it is correct. The Budget is a ‘money bill’ which involves government finances. It does not need to be cleared by the Rajya Sabha, where the ruling BJP lacks a majority, nor can the President withhold approval for more than a fortnight.

In recent history, this is the first time after 2004-05 that an entire Budget has been rammed through Parliament without a minute’s discussion.

In the earlier instance, the newly-elected UPA-I government had a fig leaf: the Budget Session had very little time. This year, even that excuse does not hold – there are three more weeks left in this session.

There are three possible explanations, none of which contradicts the other, to explain this behaviour.

• One is that the BJP has spent too little time as a governing party and is forever in campaign mode. Therefore, things like parliamentary debate are distractions, snatching time away, say, from a stump speech in Aizawl, the capital of Mizoram, where polls will be held this year.
• The second is that the BJP’s slim majority in the Lok Sabha has generated a sense of great hubris. Today, it believes it can steamroll any legislation it wants through Parliament, even if other parties and lawmakers have good, logical reasons to oppose those.
• But ultimately, the most important reason why the BJP couldn’t care less about democratic values like debate, discussion, airing and clarification of differences, etc, lies in its ideology.

RSS’ Anti-Democracy History

Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, otherwise called ‘Guruji’, was the most influential leader and theorist of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the parent of today’s BJP.

Golwalkar led the RSS from 1940 to the 1970s. He had no time for the ‘messy business’ called democracy. Sometime in the 1950s, he wrote: “The Rajasuya and the Ashwamedha Yagnas had but one chief motive and that was to bring the whole of Bharat under the supreme political authority of a single Chakravarti.”

Of course, when political authority stems from the sacrifice of a horse, minor things like the Constitution could be scrapped or re-written.

Thus, in 1956: “Let our present leaders…take courage in both hands, take a realistic view of things, envisage the dangers of disruption staring us in the face,… and, with a firm hand, change the present ill-conceived federal structure to the only correct form of government, the unitary one.”

Despite these foundational beliefs, today’s BJP is forced to lobby for votes, appeal to different kinds of Indians, peddle different promises to different constituents. But every time it gets a chance to subvert democracy, like shoving a Rs 90 lakh-crore Budget down the Parliament’s gullet in 30 minutes, it jumps at it.

The mythical horse of ashwamedha might not be at hand, but at least there’s a parliamentary guillotine to seek consolation in.

(The writer is a Delhi-based senior journalist. He can be reached @AbheekBarman. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same)

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