With a new Parliament in place and a united opposition in place, the tradition of healthy debate on leading issues is the least that the public expects from the MPs. Thinkers, economists, political analysts and students of public policy are keen to know how Parliament behaves and what issues are taken up, leading to beneficial action for society as a whole.
After careful consideration, I found 30 questions which need constructive deliberation in the August House of the Lok Sabha in the newly built Parliament House, which metaphorically should also bring novelty and innovation to our democratic system of governance.
One hundred smart cities were announced in 2015 to be completed by 2020. As of now, only 23 have finished the required projects and the remaining 77 show a large amount of work in progress. Since these smart cities are extremely useful for urban development and comfortable living for the people of India, details of projects to be done, why there are time and cost overruns and what is the likely date of completion of the remaining smart cities is a valid starting point for the Parliament.
Swachh Bharat was announced a few years ago and taken on a mission mode for a couple of years. The situation is back to normal, as is visible all over the country, including Delhi. Clean India cannot remain a gimmick for a limited period of time and hence healthy debate will keep all on their toes.
Free power to every household is a scheme that has officially reached its target. However, in actual fact, where are the gaps, why do they exist, where have the funds allocated gone and by when will light be visible in every house are useful questions, begging accurate answers.
Free piped water supply to each household was announced a few years ago and then declared as achieved. Huge gaps exist in this area too and MPs need to talk and get assurances on timelines by which this should be closed.
Two dedicated freight corridors, eastern and western, were conceived more than a decade ago. The eastern one, spanning from Ludhiana to Sonnagar, about 1,337 km, is purportedly completed, while the western one has more than 400 km yet to be done. The MPs need to find out why there has been an inordinate delay, what are the time and cost overruns and are the objectives for this huge investment being met as envisaged?
The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) says that more than Rs. 5,10,000 crore is the cost overrun on 438 large infrastructure projects in the country. Is it not important for the Parliament to discuss why, approximately, on average, more than Rs. 1,000 crore worth of excess funding is done for each of these initially estimated Rs. 150 crore-plus projects monitored by MoSPI? Who is responsible for excesses on time and cost and how should a system be put in place to prevent this huge loss of taxpayers’ money in the future?
A very heartening feature is the rapid expansion in our remittances from abroad, touching about USD 125 billion in 2023-24. Parliament needs to debate how we can reduce the cost of remitting money to India through the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and other Reserve Bank of India (RBI) incentives, so that this valuable source of foreign exchange can remain on a healthy growth trajectory for a long time. The pain points of the Indian diaspora should also be discussed to enable larger non-resident Indian (NRI) remittances, which today do a great job of bridging the current account deficit in our balance of payments.
The G20 showcased India as a leader of the South. All world leaders speak well about India and yet we are nowhere near getting our justified seat in the UN Security Council through its urgent reforms and expansion. Parliament is the right place to pass appropriate resolutions in this matter and justify why India, the most populated country in the world and hence the largest democracy, is being denied its full voice in the scheme of the United Nations. Are we not important when it comes to global security?
Our foreign exchange reserves are a matter of pride for India, having crossed USD 655 billion recently. It has also enabled us to bring back the gold that was lying in London vaults. MPs must study and discuss how best and how creatively this forex reserve can be used for the betterment of the people of India.
With Russia, because of discounted oil, our trade has risen 10 times in the last five years and reached USD 62 billion. But we have a trade deficit of USD 57 billion, which is large and which is in rupee accounts, enabling a huge possibility of enhancing goods and services exports to Russia. The learned MPs should deliberate on this matter and find ways and means of expanding our outward trade with a friendly country that is eager to do business with us.
Our trade target with the USA was fixed at USD 500 billion by the two Heads of State about seven to eight years ago. Despite large-scale expansion in our relationship on various fronts, the total trade has reached only USD 119 billion today. This again requires extensive debate, so that measures can be put in place to realise the full potential of our commercial relationship in the context of the One China Policy that is prevalent today.
Despite all kinds of statements and ad-hoc actions to check inessential imports from China, our trade deficit has risen by more than 50 per cent in the last six years and has touched a peak of USD 85 billion today. There are pulls and pressures by traders to buy cheap imports from China. Bureaucratically, it is not possible to reduce this massive trade deficit. Hence, Parliamentarians need to do informed deliberation and devise a concrete strategy to either expand our exports to China or curtail our inessential imports and contain the massive trade deficit, which is making us dependent on an unfriendly country.
It is surprising and agonising to see that despite so many free trade agreements (FTAs) signed so far, none has provided a trade surplus to the country. While critics may argue that a trade surplus is not an objective of an FTA, the counterargument is also true that all
FTAs cannot burden the country with trade deficits. This debate can be best taken up in Parliament, weighing the pros and cons of each FTA and devising a strategy for how to deal with any further FTA.
Coming to domestic issues, there are several that need urgent deliberation by the MPs. Since Gurgaon has become the hub of all important offices and traffic between Delhi and Gurgaon has multiplied manifold, huge traffic congestion daily is no longer easy to navigate. The MPs from the two locations need to carefully look at the areas of improvement, including professional traffic police management and facilitation of faster movement of lakhs of people daily through better technology. The Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) tax collection pain points also need to be either removed or digitised.
Our public hospitals are flooded with people who face acute problems of lack of adequate signages, seating arrangements and proper toilet and drinking water facilities. The adequate number of doctors, nurses and paramedical staff needs to be reassessed in each one, so that patient care gets full attention. This requires a wider debate in Parliament and concrete measures need to be taken for each public hospital, with a 24x7 public relations officer to handle complaints.
The speed at which artificial intelligence (AI) is spreading globally and in India, as is visible in social media, is a pointer to the fact that MPs must discuss ways and means to create an AI education policy to be implemented in the right spirit in all our schools, colleges and universities, to equip our students with the skills that are going to determine the future of their careers.
Elections through electronic voting machines (EVMs) have been an enormous reform from the manual counting days. Yet, we have six to eight personnel required in each polling booth when Digital India, through a laptop or iPad operated by one person, can easily do the job of identification through Aadhaar and then inking, while the control unit can be manned by a second person in the booth. Such technology-related electoral reforms, including a constitutionally valid electoral bond, need urgent discussion in Lok Sabha to prevent accusations and counter-allegations.
Court matters are generally considered sub judice and are not discussed in Parliament, but with pendency in all courts running into several crores, the time has come for debate and discussion on what can be done through technology and legal amendments, so that administering justice is not compromised at all. Measures like arbitration have not helped and hence mediation, out-of-court settlement and other avenues need to be debated in Parliament to find viable options.
Media reports indicate that the UPI network did a record 14 billion transactions in May 2024, worth Rs 20.45 lakh crore. This logically means that cash has been replaced by digital transactions to a large extent. Why cash in circulation continues to increase, despite UPI setting new records every month, requires informed debate even if unpalatable to some vested interests. The Reserve Bank of India and the Finance Ministry need to convince the MPs that this logical anomaly will be resolved quickly, now that election compulsions are over.
The inauguration of Nalanda University is a great achievement in the history of India. However, creating huge infrastructure alone cannot bring it to its pristine glory. It would require scholars of the highest level to come from far and wide and research, as they used to do before. MPs need to debate and find options for getting the best faculty globally, to don the various departments of Nalanda University. Hiring Nobel Laureates, full-time or part-time, to attract scholars worldwide to learn at their feet can be decided by the Parliamentarians.
Mughal invaders and British tyrants ruled India for centuries and yet their names adorn the roads of Delhi and several metropolitan cities of India. Is it justified? This is a larger question that MPs need to find answers to, so that road names like Babur, Tughlaq, Sher Shah Suri, Aurangzeb Lane, Taimurnagar, Nazafgarh and Humayun can be renamed with Indian patriots and soldiers of repute. The same with roads having English names like Hamilton, Cornwallis, Connaught and Windsor. They need immediate replacement by freedom fighters who are conspicuous by their absence and hence, the present generation is ignorant about them.
The National Education Policy was announced four years ago and yet very little movement has taken place in its implementation, causing acute anguish to the students who are unsure of what is in store for them. The MPs need to thrash out this matter as soon as possible and recommend a road plan for its implementation for the larger good of the education sector.
The government acted with alacrity and awarded a semiconductor assembly plant in Gujarat, while the packaging unit was dumped in faraway Assam. Since it defies business sense and can create unviable entities, causing a huge loss to the nation, it deserves Lok Sabha attention.
While the government is focusing on and enabling faster and larger electronics production in the country, we are yet to devise a national policy and an action plan for chip production on a large scale to meet the needs for all future electronic devices. Intelligent debates on these matters will raise the stature of our Parliament.
One of the allegations against the government is that the states not ruled by them do not get their fair share of allocated funds and revenues. Hence, this matter cannot be swept under the rug and needs a data-wise question hour, so that the pain points can be released and the structure of the federal government and the states can be cohesively tied together.
There are doubts about the expenditure done under the I-care Fund, which was started during Covid. For the sake of clarity and propriety, Parliament must insist on an audited statement of the I-care Fund to be placed before it for the benefit of all MPs.
The situation in Andhra Pradesh, of frequent shifting of the state capital from Amravati to Visakhapatnam and back to Amravati, has caused a huge strain on the taxpayers’ money and is a matter which cannot be resolved in the State Assembly. Lok Sabha has the right to initiate discussion on this, as it is incorrect and inappropriate to shift state capitals at the whims and fancies of the chief ministers.
State governments release full-page daily advertisements, especially two of them, listing their achievements, yet losing the recent polls. While the apex court did intervene and question one particular government about the excess expenditure at the cost of development expenditure, taxpayers’ money cannot be squandered frivolously. Therefore, MPs need to debate and devise a national publicity policy so that development is not compromised for the sake of sloganeering.
Ease of doing business remains a cause of deep concern, with media reports indicating an exodus of more than 4,000 millionaires from India this year and 5,000 plus last year. MPs can ask their Parliamentary committees to get a professional survey done and find out the reasons for the dissonance of such Indian residents, to enable action that can be taken legally and such large exodus contained timely.
PM Awas Yojana has existed for more than 40 years. A huge budget has again recently been announced for the construction of houses for the poor. Is there a finality in the process of the creation of houses for the poor or is it an indeterminate fund flow? This again needs a data-based debate, because no one can be allowed to manipulate and continue budget expenditures well beyond a reasonable length of time.
I had given 21 tips in my last article ‘NDA - 100 Days Agenda’. Now that the Parliament session is beginning, the above 30 issues are pertinent and relevant, requiring informed, intelligent and intensive debate to arrive at beneficial conclusions and solutions for the welfare of the Indian public.
I am completely apolitical and hence expect that these ideas, arrived at after a great amount of thought, will find due consideration and deliberation in the August House of Indian Parliament.
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