Our Parliament, representing the world’s largest democracy, is the most complex institution ever conceived by collective human brains. And that makes it extremely difficult to keep track of what goes on within that round building and report on it. It’s understandable that journalists are not able to keep track of the hundreds of rules that have to be followed when members raise an issue, the hundreds of issues that are raised practically on a daily basis and also the complicated legislation introduced during sessions. It’s completely understandable how difficult the job of a reporter on the Parliament beat can be.

Having said that, it’s also important for them to wade through this quagmire of complexity and make some sense of it. Their job is to simplify these complexities and explain to the people how it affects them IRL. Are our journalists failing in doing that job?

Take, for instance, the recent no-confidence motion debate in Parliament. It was an event that the whole nation was interested in — and craving for some context about what the fuss was about. It was important to point out that in the previous Budget session, similar motions were filed but rejected by the Lok Sabha speaker. It was important to explain that the primary reason for this motion was the demand by Members of Andhra Pradesh to get a special status for their state. It was necessary to explain that another lot of Members were simultaneously outraging about the Cauvery Water Management Authority, a demand which was subsequently fulfilled by the government.

Even if you keep the past context aside, it was important to ask a few basic questions regarding the debate itself. What are the questions that Members were asking and wanted the government to respond to? Did the government and the Prime Minister actually answer those multiple questions asked by members — not just Congress MPs but others too. Why was a response on the effects & achievements of the bonkers demonetisation move by the government in 2016 completely absent? These are questions which should have ideally made headlines. Anchors on TV debates should have grilled their panelists systematically on each issue, probably for days, and extracted some answers out of them. Instead, what we saw was debates on a hug and wink.

Why is it that we are failing to focus on these obvious things and talk about the real issues plaguing our Parliament? Why is it that we fail to question how this present government has been using legal trickery to undermine the institution and escape accountability? It’s a problem and we need to address it. And I can’t do it alone.

Newslaundry‘s webseries, Consti-tuition, was done to break down the functioning of our government, the whole complex structure, into understandable bits and pieces. All with the hope that it would be a starting point resource for journalists, policy makers and people in general to follow what goes down in our democracy. We did this series with one objective in mind: Let’s get more people involved in our quest to keep constant vigilance on the government, be it any government of the present or the future. (Not-so-subtle-plug: Season 2 coming soon!)

And now, at The Media Rumble, yours truly shall be hosting a masterclass to give some tips and tricks on how to get involved in policy-making, how to track what goes on in Parliament and some thoughts on how to make content more relatable while reporting on it.

If you are someone who is also asking the same questions that I am, do join in. Let us ponder on these questions together on August 3 at 9.30 am and come out of the session with some solid answers

Register at themediarumble.com.

Date: August 3 & August 4 

Venue: India Habitat Centre, New Delhi.