Have you ever wondered how the attendance problem in the Indian Parliament can be solved? Or how the expenses incurred for the transportation, lodging and housing of MP’s can be brought down? I want to pitch a fantastic solution for this. An e-parliament.
This is infact an idea that has been discussed in todays Times of India by Rajesh Chakraborty. If you are a person who has worked in the IT industry, you must have exercised this privilege known in its fancy name: “Work from home”. I want to expand upon this idea and enunciate the numerous benefits that such a technological intervention can bring in.
The MP’s could connect to the Parliament Server via a VPN and then participate in the proceedings virtually. There could be multiple channels for the proceedings. One for the participants (MP’s) and another for the spectators. I believe a significant chunk of the work that is done in Indian parliament could be done in a “Work from Home” manner.
There are several benefits to conducting the proceedings of the Parliament online. For one, it would be easier to control the proceedings and keep the house in order. Now the speaker can simply block the channel of the MP’s who create unnecessary ruckus and move on with the proceedings. The problem of members in non-attendance could be solved. With the coming of so much infographics in the media, parliamentary proceedings can be made even more entertaining than a cricket match. Imagine that an MP gets up to deliver his speech and an infographic immediately pops up. That would display information regarding that MP like his attendance in Parliament, the number of questions he has raised in the Parliament, number of Private member’s bill that he has presented, the committees of which he is a member of etc. People would be immensely empowered with so much information at their fingertips. An otherwise boring parliamentary session would be more engaging than a cricket match.
I disagree with Mr. Chakraborty in bringing the costs of the parliament down. The amount spent on the lodging and travel should instead be diverted into maintaining the standards of the service delivery through the website. It shouldn’t be like the shoddy photoshop work that the information bureau undertook during the Prime Ministers visit to Chennai during the floods.
What would we use the Parliament for? The “Work from Home” option should not mean that the Parliament building now be converted into shoddy back offices. Instead there are important works like the meetings of select committees, Joint Committees, Important committees like the PAC, COPA etc which should convene not virtually but physically. Their workings are of deeper deliberation and discussion and of a continuous nature and hence better conducted offline.
There are many challenges that would also need to be met before we can move to such a system. Some of them could be the following
- Such a system would require state of the art digital infrastructure. We can’t expect MP’s from remote areas with little connectivity to be able to properly exercise their parliamentary duties properly. A solution in the initial stages could be that they are made to attend the proceedings in Delhi itself, while the state builds the necessary connectivity in a war footing.
- It has to be invulnerable to cyber attacks. Just like the Parliament attacks by the terrorists in 2001, by migrating our temple of democracy online, we are throwing open ourselves to attack from any terrorist group anywhere in the world. It will be a thousand times easier target to cyber crime. Therefore, unless we are able to ensure the security of our infrastructure we can’t undertake such a project.
- Not all MP’s might be having the technical expertise to navigate through all this. However, this is easily solved given that they can be allotted a technical expert by the Parliament or allowance made for them to hire one from a list prepared by the Parliament.
The future of democracy lies is e-Parliament. There is no doubt about that. Indirect democracy was the second step post direct democracy. Virtual democracy will be the next one. It is for no other reason that almost all sci-fi movies portraying a future superior human civilisation shows a high council that convenes every now and then using technologies similar to hologram.