The delimitation trap: Is India moving towards the Chinese model of domesticating debate?
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The Bharatiya Janata Party-led government’s decision to summon a special session of Parliament on Thursday to discuss bills to expand the size of Lok Sabha has ignited a debate that goes beyond mere seat arithmetic.
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The increase in the number of seats is being framed as a constitutional necessity to ensure better representation for the growing number of voters. In effect, the move appears to be the latest brick in a structural wall being built to imprison Indian democracy.
We are witnessing a transition where the machinery of governance increasingly reflects the political management of the People’s Republic of China, moving away from the deliberative friction of Western democratic models – most notably the high-scrutiny system of the United States.
Perils of a mammoth parliament
The push for delimitation – redrawing the boundaries of electoral constituencies – threatens to create a mammoth Parliament of over 800 seats in Lok Sabha.
It would seem to mirror the model embodied in China’s National People’s Congress. When the nearly 3,000 deputies of the National People’s Congress meet in Beijing every year, all they do is provide a veneer of democratic legitimacy to decisions already finalised by the Party’s central leadership.
A legislature of such gargantuan proportions is inherently unwieldy. When hundreds of members are squeezed...