 Hello and welcome to Newslet. Today we have with us Hamrat Singh, who is a political analyst and previously worked with member of parliament as a research associate. And the budget session in the parliament is going on and we are here to discuss the citizen's participation and how citizens can participate in the parliamentary discussion and debate. And a very important aspect of it to begin with is the question hours. You know when we talk about parliament we mostly think about bills or the opposition parties you know they are debating and discussing and arguing but it is much more than that. So if you could tell us begin about telling us with what is this question hour and why is it important. See the first hour in Lok Sabha is question hour and the second hour in Rajya Sabha is question hour. It itself says how important it is. In a question hour an MP gets an opportunity to ask various ministries, question pertaining to his constituency and also to the nation as a whole. This is a time where in Rajya Sabha one can ask 50, not one but overall people can ask, the MPs can ask 15 questions and at the same time in Lok Sabha one can the complete lot can ask 20 questions. So there are lot of questions an MP can raise throughout a session. And it is written and oral both. It is written and oral both. So there are 15 questions in Rajya Sabha which is an oral form and 160 questions which is in written form. And similarly there are 20 questions in Lok Sabha which is an oral form and 230 questions which is in written form. And the questions can be to various ministries the dates are allotted for the same. And the questions are largely focused on different schemes, policies, promises which were made by the ministries and therefore it creates a lot of accountability in the parliament. The MPs should focus more on making it more productive, more creative because this is a time where we can actually ensure that the promises made by the minister, the government is getting fulfilled or not getting fulfilled where things are lacking. So those clearities comes in through questionnaire. So it is very important that we focus these MPs focus a lot on. And we also get a lot of through these questions a lot of information we get as you know when we are seeing the session this is a medium that we can get. I mean the information which comes out is the most authentic information because these are coming on the floor of the house and these are coming from ministries. So these are most authentic informations and has its credibility. It is important that the questions are properly framed because a properly framed question will generate more information and an improperly framed question will not be able to generate that much of information. So the MPs can bring in a lot of data. I will just give you an example. So when I used to work with an MP in the parliament, we asked the question about SIT formed by this government on anti-seek riots and about its progress. So we got to know how they have witnessed thousands, so how they have met with thousand witnesses, how they have reopened 60 cases working on them. So these information came in public domain for the first time through question are. So these question are is very important and I think unfortunately we are not giving that much focus or emphasis on this. I will also share another example. So nowadays we have this whole debate on raffle deals and on whether it is a scam or a proper deal or why it was reduced from 100 plus aircrafts to 36 aircrafts. So I will give you an instance from Lok Sabha, November 2016 I think. So Lok Sabha MP raised this question on the budget at which these aircrafts were brought and Defence Ministry has categorically said that it is somewhat 650 crores. But now the same Defence Ministry is saying that we cannot bring out and open that what was the deal, what was the amount per aircraft signed. But this information is already in public domain that it was 650 crores. So that is how powerful this question are is. And how can we as citizens get our question to the parliament through this? See every member of parliament represents a lot of citizens approximately 20 lakh per member of parliament and Rajasabha MPs also are indirectly representing a lot of people. So there can be two ways where normal public or media organizations or even civil society can participate. One way is when that question is worked, question is written. So say I want to understand or I want to know that the aims which was supposed to be constructed in my city when it will be constructed what stage we have reached. So I will send a letter to my MP requesting him to ask this question. Maybe I will tweet my MP and ask him to raise this question. Yeah, yeah. I mean see that does not work but we have to ensure that that work that will work in future. So we will have to force our MP that sir or ma'am you have to raise this question because this question concerns us and you are our representation in parliament. So we can tweet, we can create, we can write articles and or we can just directly meet our MP and say yes bring it to their notice and once it is brought to their notice it is important that we follow up that those questions are coming up in parliament. Similarly media organizations and civil societies should also discuss things with member of parliament should also get an understanding of what are the issues they are raising and if there are some information which are not in public domain say what is the allotment done for smart cities. So how do we know that? We can approach an MP to use this question in the parliament and through that we can understand. The most interesting part is that budget session is on and budget session is all about dividing the funds among for various schemes and for various ministries. After six months when we have to know that if say a thousand crore was allotted for some project. So what is the progress or how much fund is used? That is where this question comes in, that is where the role of these questions comes in and a media organization or civil society can push an MP, can ask an MP, can request an MP to use these questions and it is also important that once these questions are asked and this brings a lot of information in public domain. So the civil societies, the media people should use this information in their articles. If you don't use them unfortunately only showing media debates in a form of war, fight, sitting in a TV studio doesn't solve the purpose of the journalism as a whole and the media is creating awareness on what is actually happening in the country and the policies and the effects of the policies that are going to take place. Exactly and using question hour is the best way to do that is what I believe. Are there any shortcomings to this question hour or is there any scope of improvement in making it better? See, question hour is a wonderful initiative in itself which was designed and planned by our parliamentary forefathers that the only problem is that we don't discuss it for the complete one hour which is allotted by it. Less than 50% is the productivity of this hour in Lok Sabha and similar is the situation in Rajya Sabha. So you can- Throughout the years, I mean this is the general trend which I am saying for past one or two years and out of 15 questions say five or six get answered. So this is really problematic. But why does this happen? This happens because of disruption in parliament. The opposition wanted to raise some issues and the government is not ready to take those issues. So that debate starts, that ruckus start in the parliament and this one hour get derailed. Because people are not really included with what goes on in the parliament and I don't think that people are anymore watching also what happens in Lok Sabha. So how do you think we can improve this, get this by, you know that people should be more aware and more conscious and encouraged to know about what is happening in parliament because it's going to directly affect their lives. I think the shows like this will be very helpful. Debating and discussing how parliament functions is very important. It's important that government takes up this initiative and discuss parliamentary procedures in different universities, colleges and at different platforms. Similarly civil societies, NGOs and media should come up with such debates, organize many parliaments and participate there. So these things will bring in more participation and once the more participation comes in, once people are more aware about the parliament and it's functioning, this will automatically make our MPs more accountable and this will automatically ensure that the parliament functions properly and the productivity of the parliament will automatically increase. Last year the number of days parliament function was very, very low. I mean maybe the lowest from the beginning of, from the time the parliament has started in the country and it is very unfortunate and since this is not the matter of debate for we general people, the government is fine with it. So we are largely focused on TV debates and those things but we have to ensure that these things which are actually affecting an individual life, which is actually affecting the growth of the nation is actually addressed properly and somewhere we have reduced from 100 days or 100 days plus of parliament to somewhat 50, 60, 70 days of parliament and this trend has to change, is what I believe. Another thing I want to know is the prime minister through this approachable, can is there? The question are. Yeah, through the question. Can we pose questions to the prime minister also? Definitely, I mean there are days when the question can be posed to prime minister but unfortunately there is a trend in our country that the prime minister generally don't answer that question. I'll compare this with the western democracies, maybe Britain. Britain, you'll see that the prime minister answers each and every question posed to her or him by the member of parliament. The same should happen in the country also, that is the rules. It should happen in our country but unfortunately what we see that the prime minister office doesn't answer, I mean the prime minister doesn't answer question, maybe a junior minister on his behalf is answering the question but the prime minister of the nation is not answering those questions and this trend has to change. So I think our prime minister is so vocal on various platforms should take this opportunity and answers the grievances of different member of parliaments and actually answering the grievances of common public at large. More information and more details of the policies should be given to the public but unfortunately what we see in media is not what's happening in the parliament but more about how you know the ridiculous topics that we do see in mainstream media. So through the involvement of citizens media and the government how do you think we can improve the structure of parliament as you said that the productivity is also reducing and you have mentioned a few points before but also I would like you to reemphasize on points on how we citizens can get more included in the parliamentary session, discussion and debate and how can the media and the government also be part of that. See I think the first step for every citizen is to at least start giving some time to watch Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha TV. You can watch the actual debates maybe use the just watch the topics you like but you can watch the actual debates the media fraternity the civil societies should improve the participation of people by creating awareness among them. So like other important things which civil societies endures and media focuses on they should specially give some time to discuss and debate how the parliament functions every day and I think that would be a best way for to generate more participation among people and for common public I think start interacting with your member of parliament. We have this phobia that member of parliament are hard to meet or I mean they are unapproachable which they should not be. So it should start happening from both the sides the MPs needs to get more approachable thanks to Twitter somewhat that's happening. So do you think that because of this ignorance from the citizen side and also the media side that it kind of you know gives leniency to the MPs or you know lessens the accountability because we are not really caring about what's happening. Well definitely I mean I believe around half of the MPs don't file the number of questions they are allowed to file it's only less than half of the MPs who use the complete strength which is given to them. So why those MPs don't ask question strange we should also check the attendance of these MPs in the parliament of are they attending parliament regularly how many number of debates are they participating are they listening I mean what private member bills have they raised in the parliament and I would recommend two things for the people to actually go through other than Lok Sabha Rajya Sabha TV the one is the Lok Sabha Rajya Sabha website it has all the information one needs to look at the other is the PRS legislative services they are doing tremendous work to improve the quality of the parliament and one can track their MPs performance parliamentary performance in the in the PRS website it's a wonderful platform to understand any bills in a one pager with a one pager document this hopefully spreads more awareness and encourages provoked people to to get more inclusive with the parliament debates and further we'll also talk about discuss about these issues thank you for joining us