NCERT Solutions Exploring Society: India and Beyond Chapter 6 –162End-of-chapter exercise — Questions and activities

How to work it out. Every state sends members to both Houses, and in both cases the number depends on the population of the state — that is the rule the chapter gives you. Lok Sabha MPs are directly elected, one from each parliamentary constituency in the state; Rajya Sabha MPs are indirectly elected by an electoral college.

Where to check: sansad.in (the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha sites) list members state by state, and the Election Commission’s site lists the parliamentary constituencies of each state. Always take the current figure from there rather than from memory.

Sample answer — a few states, so you can see how population drives the numbers:

Write the sentence for your own state in this form: “My state is … . It sends … members to the Lok Sabha and … members to the Rajya Sabha. My own parliamentary constituency is … and my MP is … .”

Parliament is the ‘voice of the people’ because every one of its members is there through the people’s choice, and because it can compel the government to answer. Four things make that true:

1. Universal adult franchise. Every adult citizen votes, irrespective of social or economic background, gender, race or religion. So the Lok Sabha is elected by the whole people, not by a section of them.
2. Direct election, constituency by constituency. Each MP is answerable to a particular set of people who can vote her out at the next election.
3. The government is drawn from, and can be removed by, the elected House. Because the Council of Ministers is collectively responsible to the Lok Sabha, the government “can therefore be seen as functioning with the people’s consent”.
4. Parliament controls the money. Nothing can be spent that the people’s representatives have not sanctioned.

How different opinions are heard. Not by accident — there are specific mechanisms.

Because the Executive is the organ with the real power to affect people’s daily lives — and in a democracy no such power can be left unanswerable to the people. The Legislature is the only body the people themselves elect, so making the Executive responsible to it is the same as making it responsible to the people, at one remove.

Work through what would follow if it were not so:

Because one House, however democratically elected, was judged to be not enough for a country of India’s size and diversity. The chapter records that extensive discussions took place during the making of the Constitution on exactly this question, and gives two reasons for the answer.

1. Capacity. “It was felt that a single directly elected House would be inadequate to meet the challenges independent India would face.” A second chamber gives every law a second, less hurried examination.
2. Federalism. “In the spirit of ‘federalism’, it was felt that a Council of States, the Rajya Sabha, was needed.” India distributes power between the centre, the states and local governments; the states therefore needed a chamber of their own at the national level.

And the design followed the purpose. The composition and the process of election to the Rajya Sabha were deliberately made different — indirect election by an electoral college rather than direct election by voters. If both Houses were elected the same way, the second House would simply repeat the first, and there would be no point in having it.

Method. Use Fig. 6.8 as your checklist and fill in a date for each stage. Track one bill only, and pick one that has already become an Act, otherwise your last rows will be empty.

Then answer the three questions asked: which House it started in; what the disagreement was about (usually money, or who the law will apply to, or which government — Union or state — should do the work); and the total time, which you get by subtracting the introduction date from the date of assent.

Sample answer, using the bill this chapter already tracks: “I tracked the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Bill. It was introduced in the Rajya Sabha. A committee studied it thoroughly and suggested modifications. The major disagreement was about funding — new schools, infrastructure and teachers for millions of children would be costly — and it delayed the bill for years; by 2008 the MPs determined it was time. After the 2009 elections the new government pursued the matter, and in August 2009 the bill was passed in the Lok Sabha and received the President’s assent, becoming an Act. Counting from Article 21A in 2002, it took about seven years; counting from the idea in the Directive Principles, far longer.”

How to set it up. Assign these roles, then run the eight stages of Fig. 6.8 in order — that structure is your script.

The running order for the skit (about 20 minutes): introduction in one House → reading → reference to the Standing Committee (with its report) → consideration and clause-by-clause discussion with two amendments actually voted on → vote on the bill → the same debate compressed in the other House → Presidential assent → the Speaker announcing Gazette notification.

Because wide support at the end of a process is not the same as agreement all the way through it — and because this was a constitutional amendment, which is the hardest kind of law to pass. The chapter has already given you every tool needed to explain the delay.

1. It changes the Constitution, not just a statute. Reserving seats in the Lok Sabha and the State Legislative Assemblies means amending the Constitution itself. An ordinary bill needs an ordinary majority; a constitutional amendment needs a much larger and more broadly based one. A proposal can therefore command majority support and still fail.
2. A bill lapses when the Lok Sabha is dissolved. The proposal was first brought before Parliament in the mid-1990s and was introduced again in later Lok Sabhas. Every general election that intervened meant starting the parliamentary journey again — introduction, reading, committee, debate — from the beginning.
3. There were genuine disagreements about the design, not only about the goal. Discussions turned on questions such as whether there should be reservation within the reservation for particular groups, how the reserved seats should be chosen and rotated, and how long the arrangement should last. These are exactly the clause-by-clause questions that the lawmaking process exists to settle, and they take time.
4. Committees examined it more than once. As with the RTE, referral to a committee adds months but improves the text; the RTE story in this chapter shows the same pattern — an idea everyone accepted in principle still took seven years from Article 21A to the Act.
5. Implementation raises further questions. Any reservation of seats has to be worked out against the delimitation of constituencies, which is itself a large exercise. Parliament had to be satisfied that the law could actually be put into effect.

Two different kinds of damage — one to the laws themselves, one to the relationship between citizens and their representatives.

1. On the quality of laws. Every stage of Fig. 6.8 needs time on the floor of the House. Take the time away and the stages get compressed:

The numbers in the chapter make this concrete: sittings fell from 677 in the 1st Lok Sabha to 356 in the 13th, and Rajya Sabha productivity fell from about 78% to about 65%, with one session as low as 6.80% and the worst year, 2018, at 35.75% — explicitly “under the impact of disruptions”.

2. On trust. People watch Parliament to see their own concerns argued out. When they see the House adjourned instead, three things follow: they conclude that their problem was not raised; they doubt that debate changes anything; and they begin to believe that their representatives are more interested in the contest than in the work. The chapter notes both this concern and the related one that a substantial proportion of Lok Sabha representatives have criminal cases against them, and that many sessions are marked by angry or biased debates that do not seriously address issues affecting the people. Media cartoons like Fig. 6.13, which jokes about the Monsoon Session bringing “thunder, lightning, storms, breaches”, are how a healthy democracy expresses that frustration.

The key to this whole activity is the three Lists. An MP legislates on the Union List and the Concurrent List; an MLA legislates on the State List and the Concurrent List. So the correct question depends on who has the power to act — asking the right person the wrong question is the commonest mistake.

How to run it. Form four or five interest groups — for example a school-education group, a public-transport group, a clean-water group, a jobs-and-skills group, an environment group. Each group picks one policy, finds out which List it belongs to, and then writes its questions in two columns.

So how do the questions differ?

• Scale. An MP’s question is about a national law, a national scheme or the Union budget; an MLA’s is about a state law, a state scheme or a specific local facility.
• Forum. An MP raises it in Parliament — at the Question Hour, or in a committee; an MLA raises it in the Vidhan Sabha.
• Who must reply. A Union minister for the MP’s question; a state minister for the MLA’s.
• Overlap is real. On a Concurrent List subject both can act — but if the Union has legislated, the state is bound to follow. The RTE is the chapter’s own example: education is in the Concurrent List, yet the Act applies all over India.

The Judiciary is the branch of government responsible for interpreting and applying the laws of the land, including in specific cases of disputes. It works through a system of courts, and the chapter gives it four tasks:

1. Interpreting laws — deciding what a law actually means when it is applied to a real situation.
2. Resolving disputes — between citizens, and between citizens and the government.
3. Safeguarding fundamental rights.
4. Acting as the custodian of the Constitution — ensuring that all branches of government operate within the principles and parameters enshrined in it. Specifically, it checks that the laws passed by Parliament have not violated the constitutional framework, and it can step in if a violation of the Constitution occurs when the Executive implements those laws.

That last task is what makes the Judiciary the third leg of the system of checks and balances: “Just as the Parliament functions through its Legislature and the Executive arms, the Judiciary functions through its Courts.”

What could happen without an independent judiciary?