The Hindu Business Line : `Healthy functioning of public institutions vital for democracy'

HEALTHY functioning of public institutions is a must if democracy has to run properly, said Mr P.K. Vasudevan Nair, Member of Parliament from Thiruvananthapuram. He said this while releasing the `Citizens Report on Governance and Development - 2004' prepared by the National Social Watch Coalition.

Agreeing with an observation in the report, Mr Nair said the average number of Parliament sittings held every year had come down since the 1950s when he first became a Member of Parliament.

According to the report, the number of sittings every year has been falling steadily over the years. For 36 years since its inception in 1952, the Lok Sabha sat for over 100 days every year. In fact, it averaged 138 sittings a year for several years. This, however, came down to 102 days in 1988. Since then, it has fallen to 80 days a year on an average.

The year 2003 saw a further decline — the Lok Sabha sat only for 74 days during this year, the report says.

The report, the second such document, analyses the contributions of the Parliament, the executive, the judiciary and the local self-government institutions vis-à-vis their commitments to different goals such as the national development goals and the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals.

In the section `Parliament watch', the report says the time spent by the Parliament on discussing issues of concern to the common people was decreasing due a fall in the number of sittings every year. However, the report emphasises that positive signs were also seen in the form of work done by several Parliamentary Standing Committee and the approval of some important legislative measures.

The `policy watch' section of the report attempts to track policy performances in areas such as employment, education and health.

For instance, India ranks 171 among 175 countries, in terms of total public expenditure on healthcare. The report says that employment in both urban and rural areas of the country has fallen.

In the `judiciary watch' segment, the report says that high pendency rate, inordinate delays, archaic laws and low morale affected the judicial system.

The report adds that the Supreme Court has been able to cut the number of pending cases from over one lakh to around 20,000 in three years by adopting systematic judicial measures.

Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal and Madhya Pradesh were lauded for promoting women's leadership in local self-government institutions. This segment of the report, which examines local governance, adds that though Panchayat Raj institutions have come up across the country, parallel development schemes and institutions have undermined the legitimacy of the panchayats.

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