It might be hard to believe, given the regular disruptions seen in both Houses of Parliament – first with the National Herald case, then DDCA and Ayodhya – but the winter session that just concluded on Wednesday was actually more productive than it seemed.
According to a PRS study the productivity of the Lok Sabha in the winter session stood at whopping 102 percent and the House managed to pass 13 bills.
As a rule, the Lok Sabha is scheduled to meet for six hours every time it is in session. The chart below shows the percentage of productive time i.e., the number of hours the House was in session, excluding the disruptions as a percentage of the stipulated six hours.
Productivity goes beyond 100 percent when the House meets for more than six hours in a day, i.e., it works late.
The productive time of Lok Sabha declines when,
- House proceedings are disrupted.
- House adjourns before transacting any business to mourn the demise of a sitting member or a dignitary.
This Looks More Like a Jigsaw Puzzle, But Look Closely
PRS Legislative Research released another graph showing the productivity of the Lok Sabha sessions this year and compared it with productivity since 2009.
Each square in the puzzle represents a day in a year. Every coloured block represents one session in the House. The green blocks represent a productive day while a red one indicates total chaos and disruption.
According to the chart, Lok Sabha has been quite productive this year, with exception of the monsoon session, when the House was regularly disrupted.
In the winter session, which concluded on Wednesday, Speaker Sumitra Mahajan preferred to carry on with the listed business even as protesting Congress members stormed the Well and shouted slogans. On many occasions, these protesting MPs even walked out of the House for the day.
While 2015 saw mostly green blocks in each session, previous years (graphs below) show many more red and orange blocks, indicating high disruption and low productivity of the House.
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