The Upper House

England, the US, and India – all of them are bicameral, i.e., they have two houses of parliament. It happened for pragmatic reasons. As democracy started to make inroads in Britain, existing lords would not accept losing all their power and privileges, while a democracy could not guarantee that they’d always have some power. Was bloodshed the only way? Britain solved the problem by creating two houses – the House of Commons where anyone could be elected, and the House of Lords which allowed the erstwhile lords to get direct entry and to pass on those rights to their heirs. That system of inheritance only stopped in 1999.

 

Since India copied the British model, we ended up with the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha. Except that membership to Rajya Sabha didn’t come by inheritance – it came via the votes of the state legislatures.

 

In both Britain and India, the upper house has repeatedly been used as a way to “insert” people into parliament – sometimes, to enable competent people who could never win an election to nonetheless become ministers (even Prime Ministers); but most of the time, as a political favour to someone.

 

The US ended up with two houses for very different reasons. While the lower house member count was proportional to the population of the states, there was concern among the smaller states that they’d be overrun by the larger member count from the larger states. The solution? To create an upper house, which would have exactly 2 members from each state, regardless of population.

 

While reading Manish Tewari’s critique on what the Rajya Sabha has achieved (nothing, he says), I was struck by why neither he nor the founders of the bicameral structure in any of the countries named above seemed to consider the obvious reason. By electing members of the upper house in batches, i.e., a fraction at a time, the structure ensures that the composition of the upper house will take a long time (5-6 years) to change. In contrast, the composition of the lower house can change overnight, after every election.

 

Keep in mind that any act or law of significance, esp. constitutional consequence, has to be passed by both houses. In a world without the upper house, the very nature of a country’s constitution could change after every election cycle. This is obviously dangerous. But the upper house, by its gradual rate of change, acts as a check against sudden and abrupt shifts after every election cycle.

 

So whatever its negatives, and despite the cost overheads it incurs, I feel it makes sense to continue with the upper house in whatever format (direct elections like the US, indirect elections in India).

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