Rajya Sabha versus the people: Who should prevail?

We have discussed how voters can be fallible, against minority rights and corrupt in previous articles. It is because of the lack of faith in voters’ judgement in the short term that the concept of the Upper House of Parliament was thought of as a necessary system of checks and balances.

Robert Caro in his Pulitzer-winning biography of Lyndon Johnson discusses the role of the US Senate and the Upper House and it being a check against voter opinion. Here is a key excerpt:

The framers of the U.S. Constitution very specifically designed the process to make it hard for change to be enacted, especially when “the emotions of men in the mass ran high and fast.”  The Framers … feared not only the people’s rulers but the people themselves, the people in their numbers, the people in their passions, what the Founding Father Edmund Randolph called ‘the turbulence and follies of democracy.’ But the Framers feared the people’s power also because they hated tyranny, and they knew there could be a tyranny of the people as well as the tyranny of a King. 

These abuses were more likely because the emotions of men in the mass ran high and fast, they were ‘liable to err … from fickleness and passion,’ and ‘the major interest might under sudden impulses be tempted to commit injustice on the minority.’ The upper house was ‘first to protect the people against their rulers; secondly to protect the people against the transient impressions into which they themselves might be led.’  The use of the Senate,’ Madison said, ‘is to consist in its proceeding with more coolness, with more system, and with more wisdom, than the popular branch.’ It should, he said, be ‘an anchor against popular fluctuations.’

It is in this context that Indians should view the logjam in the Rajya Sabha and the stalling of important Bills such as the Goods and Services Tax Bill and other reforms. For those who came in late, the Bharatiya Janata Party and National Democratic Alliance (led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi) won the 2014 General Elections with a stunning majority. However, they are in the minority in the Upper House/Rajya Sabha and the Congress/Opposition has been using their power to stall the ruling party’s (BJP) legislative agenda.

The Rajya Sabha blocking legislation is one of the negative aspects of the original purpose of the Upper House and works against the short- and long-term will of the people. There have been cases where the checks and balances in the system work against the long-term interest of the voter as well. Banjog’s research paper compilation shows the US senate obstructing civil rights for decades. Is the GST Bill, which was floated by the Congress and blocked by the BJP for five years and now being pushed by the BJP and blocked by the Congress, a classic example of the Upper House working against the long-term will of voters as well?

Welcome to democracy, where both voters and also the checks and balance could fail us.

This is the last of the four articles around voter opinion and the ways it influences politicians, corruption & government systems. Here are the first, second and third articles.