Last week in Parliament child labour was partially legalised (not kidding), a wild amendment to the Lokpal and Lokyuktas Bill appeared, a notice on exploitation of women by fairness cream companies was raised in Rajya Sabha (resulting in a lot of MP ‘likes’) and there was a little bit about the curious case of Tea-Coffee questions.
Dear Minister, try reading the bill you’re proposing
First up, the controversial Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Amendment Bill, 2016, which was passed last week and it’s something that really needs space in this column. This bill is creating a new category called “adolescents” which consist of children aged 14 – 18 years old. Under the provisions of this bill, adolescents will now be allowed to work in “family enterprises”.
Here’s how the bill defines “family” and “family enterprises”:
If you don’t realise how vague this section is, let Kalikesh Singh Deo, MP from Bolangir (Odisha), explain how this provision can be interpreted:
Basically, if a child between the age of 14-18 is employed by their father, mother or ‘mama mami chacha chachi mausa mausi’ in their enterprise, it’s all good. There is no way to verify whether the person whom a child claims as his/her relative, is actually his/her relative. The thousands of raids done by Kailash Satyarthi on brick kilns and beedi factories to free children from the clutches of slave masters will be rendered useless in the future.
The Lok Sabha was eagerly waiting for the Minister of Labour Bandaru Dattatreya to give a logical reason as to why the Government is so eager to push this provision through. His answer was vague and disappointing, to put it mildly:
His reasoning throughout the debate was that he has experience, therefore he *feels* this is the right thing to do. That is right to keep ‘adolescents’ as an exception. And then came the clincher:
Right. Sure. I think the minister should have gone through the words of his own bill before making this statement.
A wild Lokpal amendment appeared!
On Wednesday, out of nowhere, the Lokpal and Lokyuktas (Amendment) Bill, 2016 was introduced and passed without any discussion. There was no mention of the bill till noon and then suddenly, a supplementary list of business was put up and many, many rules were suspended to push this bill through. Believe you me, a lot of Members of Parliament didn’t even get a copy of the bill. You could see them running around like headless chickens, trying to find the bill. They basically had no idea what exactly they were assenting to in the Lok Sabha.
PRS Legislative Research, a not-for-profit that works on everything to do with Parliament, put out this tweet:
Bill amending Lokpal Act passed. We dont have a copy yet. Bill was introduced today and passed without debate.
— PRS Legislative (@PRSLegislative) July 27, 2016
It was a strange sequence of events. But why was this so urgent and why was the government so eager to push it?
This bill made an innocuous little amendment to Section 44 of the original Lokpal Bill, which requires public servants to declare assets and properties of themselves and their immediate family. The deadline for doing that was July 31, 2016. The definition of public servants includes bureaucrats, non-governmental organisations that get foreign funding, government funded organisations and public sector undertakings. With this tiny amendment, the date has been postponed indefinitely. The new date and method of declaration will now be decided according to rules laid down by the government and will not require the permission of the Parliament.
After getting the bill passed in 15 minutes flat in Lok Sabha, it then went to Rajya Sabha on Thursday where it was cleared without any discussion as well.
I’ll leave it to the nice, sober Lok Sabha TV lady to tell you more about it (along with the Minister’s reply):
Fair and unfair
Viplove Thakur, Rajya Sabha Member of Parliament from Indian National Congress (Himachal Pradesh), raised the issue of exploitation of women by companies advertising fairness creams. She pointed out how fairness cream ads create an inferiority complex amongst women. She gave an interesting story while raising the matter –
Although the intervention itself was quite interesting, allow me to make it even more so.
Whenever one of your friends puts up a Facebook status, you like it. Whenever your friend tweets, you retweet it. In Parliament, whenever Members approve of a matter of urgent public importance raised in the house, they “Associate” themselves. The member has to simply get up and say, “I associate” and it’s recorded.
Take a look at how many ‘Associates’ Thakur got for her statement about fairness creams
The curious case of Tea – Coffee Parliamentary Questions
Everyday during the session, the first hour of business in Lok Sabha is dedicated to MPs asking questions to the Government Ministers on a variety of topics. It’s called Question Hour. The questions are to be submitted 15 days in advance from the date when the members want them answered. These questions are selected by a random ballot procedure.
I repeat: they are randomly selected.
The first 20 questions of the day are answered on the floor of the house orally by the ministers, while 230 of those picked after that, are answered in writing. So a total of 250 questions are answered every day of the session in Lok Sabha. A member is allowed to file 20 questions a day. Even if we assume that half of Lok Sabha members file 5 questions a day that comes to around 1,300 questions a day (this is a conservative estimate).
That makes… well, a lot of questions on one day.
So we have approximately 1,300 questions every day, of which 250 will be picked through a random ballot and the first 20 will be randomly picked questions and answered orally.
Then you tell me, HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?
Last Monday, two questions (one about coffee and one about tea) were taken up for Oral answers one after the other. To make it seem a-ok, Madam Speaker found some humour in between the two questions:
*cough* Totally random *cough*
Here is an interesting article which tries to explore “whether the Parliamentary system of questions is broken”, supported by a proper statistical analysis.
Legislations Passed last week
Lok Sabha
- The Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Amendment Bill, 2016
- Institutes of Technology (Amendment) Bill, 2016
- Lokpal and Lokyuktas (Amendment) Bill, 2016
- The Benami Transactions (Prohibition) Amendment Bill, 2015
Rajya Sabha
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