Grievances that are not aired in Parliament tend to spill out on to the streets. The political class appears to have forgotten that Parliament is the forum where citizens hold the executive accountable through their elected representatives. Without the safety valve of parliamentary debates, citizens’ frustrations will manifest as civil unrest. The ongoing protest by the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) against exam breaches in the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) for medical colleges is a case in point.

“Parliament is not just a legislative but a deliberative body,” observed Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan, India’s first president, in 1952. As the highest representative body, it is by definition a space for dissent and for raising public issues. The deliberative function of the Houses of Parliament is underlined by the very fact that a plethora of devices, such as Zero Hour, adjournment motions, short-duration discussions, and so on, were instituted to enable Members of Parliament to bring up urgent matters in the two Houses.

In the words of philosopher-politician John Stuart Mill, the most important function of a representative assembly is “to watch and control the government; to throw the light of publicity on its acts; to compel a full exposition and justification of all of them which anyone considers questionable; to censure them if found condemnable”. In other words, the government is accountable to each and every member of the House because she represents the people and not just a political party. Mills adds that the........

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