It seems that the Congress and its UPA allies are getting a little fidgety in their second term in office. Many ministers are faltering. Three bills — the Enemy Property Bill, the Prevention of Torture Bill and the Educational Tribunal Bill — fell through for various reasons in the last two days of the monsoon session.
The Enemy Property Bill was an insignificant bill because it affected only a handful of people. The government wanted to push it through in haste. The opposition parties, each for its own reason, got it referred to a standing committee.
The Prevention of Torture Bill was brought in, it seems, half-heartedly. It had to be done because India had signed, but not ratified, the 1975 UN convention against torture. The bill did not have enough safeguards from the human rights angle, but the BJP saw red for the
opposite reason, deeming it an obstacle to dealing with terrorism. The Congress did not have the conviction to argue that this was not a terror-specific law. Then came the Education Tribunal Bill, a single-window dispute settlement mechanism to deal with all problems relating to education. The government rode roughshod and did not include the amendments mooted by the parliamentary standing committee. This was exposed by a Congress member in the Rajya Sabha.
All this is suggestive of increasing incompetence in UPA-2, though the second term started off on a high note. There is nothing irreversible about incompetence, but there is an obvious reason for it: complacency. Congress members believe that theirs is the party of governance and so they need not take other points of view into consideration.
This attitude is like an open manhole in a coalition-led democracy, one which can swallow the high and mighty. The fate of the three bills is but a symptom of what is happening inside government.
Disproportionate energy and attention was expended on the Nuclear Liability for Civil Damages Bill, which would have gone through anyway because of the tacit consensus. And the government just lost focus with regard to the rest of the legislative business. This is carelessness.
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