Critically comment on the shifts in the functioning of the Indian Parliament in the last two decades.

Time. Sittings have contracted sharply. Where the Lok Sabha met for well over a hundred days a year in the 1950s, recent years have often seen fewer than sixty, and sessions are frequently curtailed. Less time is available precisely as legislation has grown more complex.

Scrutiny. The Departmentally Related Standing Committees created in 1993 were the single biggest strengthening of Parliament, and their use has since declined markedly — PRS Legislative Research records the share of Bills referred to committees falling from roughly seven in ten in the 15th Lok Sabha to a small fraction in the 17th. Bills are increasingly passed within days of introduction, and demands for grants are guillotined without discussion.

Procedure. Two devices have shifted power to the executive: the money bill route, used for the Aadhaar Act and for the Finance Act provisions on tribunals, which sidelines the Rajya Sabha and whose limits the Supreme Court has flagged; and ordinances, restrained since Krishna Kumar Singh (2017) but still used.

Conduct. Disruption has become a bargaining strategy rather than an aberration, question hour has been suspended in some sessions, and mass suspensions of opposition members have made the chamber emptier during key debates. The 17th Lok Sabha ran its full term without electing a Deputy Speaker.

Countervailing gains. The Rajya Sabha's committee work remains substantive; RTI, live telecast and PRS-style data have made Parliament more visible to citizens; and Parliament still passed landmark laws, including the 106th Amendment on women's reservation in 2023.

Judgment. The shift is from a deliberative to a declaratory legislature. The constitutional powers are intact; the practices that made them meaningful have thinned.