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NCERT Solutions Exploring Society: India and Beyond Chapter 6 Challenges to the Effective Functioning of the Legislatures — LET’S EXPLORE

Book page 158 Updated on2026-09-05

Q1.
Study the data given in the following table. What conclusions can you draw about the functioning of Parliament over time? Compile data for more recent years.
Answer

Here is the table as printed, with one column added so the trend is visible.

Period of Lok SabhaNumber of sessionsNumber of sittingsAverage sittings per session
1st Lok Sabha (1952–1957)14677677 ÷ 14 ≈ 48
2nd Lok Sabha (1957–1962)16567567 ÷ 16 ≈ 35
10th Lok Sabha (1991–1996)16423423 ÷ 16 ≈ 26
13th Lok Sabha (1999–2004)14356356 ÷ 14 ≈ 25

Three conclusions follow from the numbers.

  1. The number of sessions has hardly changed — 14 to 16 across fifty years. Parliament still meets about three times a year, as the chapter says: Budget, Monsoon and Winter sessions. So the shape of the parliamentary year has stayed the same.
  2. But the number of sittings has fallen sharply. From 677 in the 1st Lok Sabha to 356 in the 13th — a drop of 321 sittings, which is very nearly half (356 is about 53% of 677). The fall is steady, not a one-off: 677 → 567 → 423 → 356.
  3. Therefore each session has become much shorter. The average length of a session dropped from about 48 sittings to about 25 — roughly half. Since a sitting usually runs 6 hours, the 1st Lok Sabha sat for roughly 677 × 6 ≈ 4,060 hours against about 356 × 6 ≈ 2,140 hours for the 13th.
Why fewer hours matters: the hours are not decoration. They are when bills are read and debated clause by clause, when ministers face the Question Hour, when committees report, and when the budget is examined. Fewer sitting hours means each bill gets less scrutiny, and every disruption costs proportionately more — because there is less time left to make up. This is exactly the concern the chapter raises: when “sessions are cut short and some bills take years to be discussed and passed, it becomes a matter of concern.”
How to compile recent data (the second half of the question):
  • Go to the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha websites (sansad.in), where the ‘Sessions’ or ‘Statistical Information’ pages list sessions and sittings for each Lok Sabha.
  • Make the same four columns for the 14th to the 18th Lok Sabha.
  • Then draw a simple bar graph with the Lok Sabha number on the x-axis and sittings on the y-axis. A picture makes the trend impossible to argue with — and lets you check whether the decline continued, levelled off, or reversed.
Q2.
Read the following statement of the former chairman of the Rajya Sabha, M. Venkaiah Naidu given in 2021: “...the productivity of Rajya Sabha during 2004-14 has been about 78% and it declined to about 65% since then. Of the 11 sessions [that he presided over], four of them clocked low productivity of 6.80%, 27.30%, 28.90% and 29.55%; during the year 2018, the Rajya Sabha recorded the lowest ever productivity of 35.75% under the impact of disruptions.” What conclusions can you draw from this statement? What implications does this have for the role that the Rajya Sabha is expected to play?
Answer

First, what ‘productivity’ means here. In the parliamentary context it is the number of hours the House actually functioned, measured against the time it was scheduled to. So 65% productivity means that for every 100 hours the Rajya Sabha was supposed to work, it worked about 65 and lost about 35.

Conclusions from the figures.

  1. The decline is real but not catastrophic on average: from about 78% in 2004–14 to about 65% afterwards — a fall of about 13 percentage points, or roughly a sixth of the working time that used to be used.
  2. The averages hide much worse sessions. Four of the eleven sessions he presided over ran at 6.80%, 27.30%, 28.90% and 29.55%. A session at 6.80% productivity is one in which the House worked for less than 7 hours out of every 100 scheduled — effectively it did not function at all.
  3. 2018 was the worst year on record for that House, at 35.75%, and the stated cause was disruptions — not holidays, not a lack of business.
  4. So the loss is concentrated, not spread out. Four bad sessions out of eleven can pull an average down far more than a slightly slower pace everywhere. That tells you the problem is episodes of breakdown, which is a different problem from general inefficiency — and it needs a different remedy.

Implications for the Rajya Sabha’s role. Remember why the Council of States was created in the first place: the Constitution makers concluded that a single directly elected House would be inadequate for the challenges independent India would face, and that in the spirit of federalism the states needed their own chamber. The Rajya Sabha is meant to be the House that takes the second, calmer look — examining bills the Lok Sabha has passed, giving the states a voice, and holding the Executive to account.

What the Rajya Sabha is expected to doWhat lost hours cost
Give bills a careful second reading and suggest improvementsBills pass with less scrutiny, or wait years — either way the “revising chamber” does not revise
Speak for the states in the federal systemRegional concerns are simply not raised in the national forum built for them
Question ministers and examine expenditureExecutive accountability weakens exactly where it should be strongest
Model reasoned public debateCitizens see disruption instead of argument, and trust in the institution falls
The fair way to state it: disruption is a tactic that any group in either House can use, and members who use it usually argue that they had no other way to force attention to an urgent issue. The statement above is by a presiding officer, describing the cost. Both things can be true — which is why the chapter’s conclusion is about institutions and citizens, not about blame: Parliament and the State Assemblies were envisioned as spaces for thoughtful debate, and it is a matter of concern when they cannot function as such.
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