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Comment by TheArcane | Hacker News Reader

A sad consequence of one political party having a majority in the parliament. Modi supporters tout it as a harbinger of efficiency bill passing when in reality it's just eroded democracy.

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Having a majority in parliament is the normal way of doing things

Unless you support the minority party in which case democracy is definitely not working and/or the voters for the majority party are deluded ;)

Majority rule and minority rights are democracy. Otherwise once vote in everyone is save … might as well no democracy.

Thank you. The minority rights and individual rights are cornerstone, democracy does not mean majority act as Emperors. There has to be strong guaranteed equal rights to all individual and minorities that allows them equal opportunity and recourse.

Its foundation is that all agree what we should all have as rights were we to ever find ourselves the minority, and those become the principles we cannot break and we owe to each individual to uphold. Beyond that, majority can decide, hopefully not stupidly and still considering minority's input, as any good leader should do, consider all data points relevant to best decision making.

To be fair, in many parliamentary systems it is very unusual for any one party to have an absolute majority. In most such systems, the winning party of an election often only wins a plurality of votes, and has to woo other parties to govern - either through a coalition or just a minority government.

India does not have a single party majority either but an alliance majority

The BJP by itself has a simple majority in the Lok Sabha, and makes up over 87% of the NDA's members in the Lok Sabha.

In 2009, Congress Party made up 78% of the UPA's members in the Lok Sabha.

Sure, though the UPA was still short of even a simple majority in the Lok Sabha, and was held up by outside support from the Left Front. The BJP's simple majority in the Lok Sabha from 2013 onwards is the first time any single party has held a majority since the 80s.

A majority in a parliamentary system still allows some room for debate and dissent since MPs are, in principle, representatives of their constituency and not of the party. However, in India, it is illegal for an MP to vote against the party line - that is grounds for their disqualification - due to the anti-defection law. Any debate is pure theatrics at this point and the party leadership is free to pass any law they want.

> in India, it is illegal for an MP to vote against the party line

Inn what way is this a functioning parliamentary system then?

> In what way is this a functioning parliamentary system then?

You can ask other parliamentary systems the same questions. For example, the Australian Labor Party requires its members to pledge their support for the collective ui decisions of the caucus, which prohibits them from "crossing the floor" as well.

Just as importantly, the Anti-“Crossing the Floor” law was passed in 1985 by the Congress Party under the leadership of Rajiv Gandhi (Son of Indira Gandhi, Husband of Sonia Gandhi, and Father of Rahul Gandhi). India’s been functioning under that system for almost 40 years, and I doubt Rahul Gandhi and Congress Party will repeal that law when they come back into party. That’s because it’s their law. They wrote it.

Do Indian MPs explicitly pledge to toe the party line?

Explicitly? No. At no point does a member sworn in as an MP have to then swear to affirm their party affiliation. In practice, however, the Anti-Defection Law deems anybody voting against the will of the party to have vacated their membership of the party, which can then be pursued to strip them of membership of the house.

Is it normal for MPs to speak out against the party line even while voting it?

Not at all. It's highly unusual for a politician to speak against the party line on a bill, if at all. The only time we ever see fracturing, if any, is around the elections, where dissatisfied members may break away or switch parties. It's not uncommon for people to switch allegiances if they were refused an election ticket as the party candidate, or for higher level politicians to form break away factions if refused the Chief Ministerial position, for example. The Anti-Defection Law allows breakaway factions only if at least 1/3rd leave en masse.

It's not a perfect system, but the provisions of the Anti-Defection Law tried to address what was a bigger issue in Indian politics - legislators changing sides for what turned out to be enormous sums of (undisclosed) money. In this climate, the incumbent party could bribe opposition members to prop up the government, and attempts to poach new legislators right after the elections reached ridiculous levels.

For what it's worth, while this does hinder a legislator from voting as per the will of their constituents even where they are at odds with the party line, within the Indian political system there are so many special interest parties that differ from each other in minor details of policy. In theory, the will of constituents could have been made manifest by voting for the policy adjacent party instead.

Again, it's not a perfect system, but it's attempting to fix the obvious issues that arose in India.

It's a feature of a multi-party parliamentary democracy - when a candidate is a representative of a party standing for any elections, and wins it, it is assumed that people voted for the candidate partly because of the electoral promises and visions of the party. Thus, if a party has made a promise to the electorate to enact some major law, and issues a whip in Parliament that all its representatives should support its passage, then they are legally bound to do so. They can still choose to abstain or even vote against it. But then the party can take action against them. (Note that this is only applicable when a party issues a whip, which democratic ones do only for laws it considers important.)

> in India, it is illegal for an MP to vote against the party line

That is not true at all. Anti-defection law is applied when elected officials run on a party and once elected decide to change their party affiliation. Not for individual bills.

It's not illegal. But that ensures their eviction from the party and can potentially destroy their political career.

The Anti-Defection Law can very much be applied if a legislator votes against a party whip, even for a bill. There are calls to limit its applicability only to votes on the government, but that is currently not the case.

Quoting from PRSIndia [1]:

Does the anti-defection law affect the ability of legislators to make decisions?

The anti-defection law seeks to provide a stable government by ensuring the legislators do not switch sides. However, this law also restricts a legislator from voting in line with his conscience, judgement and interests of his electorate. Such a situation impedes the oversight function of the legislature over the government, by ensuring that members vote based on the decisions taken by the party leadership, and not what their constituents would like them to vote for.

Political parties issue a direction to MPs on how to vote on most issues, irrespective of the nature of the issue. Several experts have suggested that the law should be valid only for those votes that determine the stability of the government (passage of the annual budget or no-confidence motions).

[1]: [The Anti-Defection Law Explained](https://prsindia.org/theprsblog/the-anti-defection-law-expla...)

So, when majority of the people support one political party that's called eroding democracy?

Many countries operate like this. It's the downside of having a parliamentary system (which IMO is better than a presidential one). Greece and Japan are good examples. Canada to a certain extent too in the past (with the LPC).

Also for a good chunk of its history, India has been run on super majorities as pointed out in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32346371

How did it erode democracy?

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