Get down to work

At the best of times, India`s elected representatives don`t score very high in confidence polls. But even by those standards, they are passing through a crisis. Three prominent MPs - one of them a minister - are in jail and accused of being involved in some of the biggest corruption scandals in independent India`s history. The high-profile civil society movement led by Anna Hazare has harnessed the angry public mood to demand a strong Lokpal to punish corruption.The government`s version of the Lokpal Bill, which was tabled in Parliament last week, has been rejected by Hazare. The main objection of Hazare and his supporters is to keeping the prime minister outside the ambit of the proposed anti-corruption watchdog. Hazare is perfectly within his rights to take to the streets in protest, but the debate over the Lokpal must now rightly be held inside Parliament by representatives that the people have elected. Sections of the public might be dead against the political class, but we can`t just give up on Parliament.Nothing is likely to happen on the Lokpal Bill before theAugust 16 deadline set by Hazare since it will almost surely be referred to aparliamentary committee. The BJP has already made its opposition known inParliament to the exclusion of the prime minister from the ambit of the Lokpal.But whether the political class will have anything to say about the immunitygiven in the Lokpal Bill to an MP`s conduct inside the House or the exclusion ofa vast majority of government servants remains to be seen.If India`selected representatives want to restore a modicum of public trust in theirleadership, they need to get their act together in the monsoon session. However,the Lokpal Bill is just one of many pieces of legislation occupying lawmakers.The Bills listed for consideration and introduction in Parliament touch on manyof the critical issues facing the country: land acquisition, food security,higher education, mining and nuclear energy to name a few.The draftLand Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill, which seeks to replacethe British-era legislation from 1894, addresses one of the burning issues ofthe day. Acquisition of land has proved to be controversial all over the countryand arguably led to the fall of the Left Front government in West Bengal. Thelong-overdue Bill, which deals with both acquisition of land and rehabilitationof displaced people, is a signi-ficant improvement on the existinglegislation.There is a slew of Bills in the area of education. Thetwo that are particularly important are the Foreign Educational InstitutionsBill and Prohibition of Unfair Practices Bill, both of which have been discussedby a standing committee and will be reintroduced in Parliament. The former willgovern the entry of foreign educational institutions into India and the latterseeks to curb unfair practices such as donations or capitation fees to collegesand universities. The Food Security Bill is yet another important piece oflegislation that has the laudable intention of making availability of foodgrainsa right for the poor, but dramatically increases the burden of the state andpromises to test the government`s leaky distribution system. The list could goon.Parliament`s recent record does not, of course, inspire muchconfidence. The figures for Parliament`s productivity and the amount of timewasted in disruptions and slogan-shouting do not make for a pretty picture.Fresh in most people`s mind is the loss of the entire 2010 winter session overthe setting up of a joint parliamentary committee to probe the 2G telecomscam.It is too much to expect that in the short monsoon session, somany major pieces of legislation will be taken up. But if Parliament is toregain some of it moral authority, it must get back to doing its primary job:debating and making law. Indeed, for important legislation such as the LokpalBill it is absolutely necessary to debate and fine-tune laws via theparliamentary committees. Otherwise we will be saddled with bad laws for a long,long time.Legislation, however, must also be passed within areasonable time. We can only hope that history won`t repeat itself with theLokpal Bill, which was first introduced in the Lok Sabha as far back as 1968 andsubsequently seven more times, but has not yet made it to the statute books. Forland acquisition, too, an amendment to the current legislation was introduced in2007 during the tenure of the UPA-I government. It lapsed in 2009 only tosurface once again in a substantially revised form. In the interim period, theprocess of land acquisition has been tied up in knots, often leading to bloodyconfrontations. This kind of delay is unpardonable.It is to thecredit of Anna Hazare and the group of activists around him that they havepushed the idea of a Lokpal to the top of the agenda. Now it is up to Parliamentto send a message that it is serious about tackling corruption as well aslegislating on other critical issues. In the first week of the monsoon sessionthere were fewer disruptions, more debate and some sense of bipartisanship. Thisweek the MPs have slipped back into familiar bickering. They need to get back towork. The nation is watching.