India’s Winter Session of Parliament: Congress Plays it Safe?

India’s winter session of Parliament commences on Thursday, November 22, 2012 and will end on December 20, 2012, and we are hoping that Members of Parlianment will finally get some real work done. The sound bytes from various political parties seem to suggest that the ruling Congress-led alliance would have to bull-doze through the opposition and could potentially face a “no-confidence” motion as well as serious pushback to various proposals, including allowing Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in retail. The government is also unlikely to receive support for even relatively “less controversial” bills given the prevailing atmosphere of political rivalry (not very dissimilar to current atmosphere in the United States).

The Congress-led government also, this time around, has put forth a more moderate agenda compared to the previous sessions (there used to be times when the government used to list approximately 40 bills each for ‘consideration and passing’ and ‘introduction’). It appears that the government wants to concentrate more on successful conduct of business over the next 20 working days, rather that the raucous debates that have been symptomatic of India’s parlianment sessions recently. It’s interesting that the government has also side-stepped introducing potentially controversial bills such as providing the poor with food security, development and regulation of mines, revising rules around land acquisition and other issues such as nuclear safety and the introduction of a Goods and Services Tax (similar to VAT).

The real question is, by December 20, will this session of parliament get anything done. Only time will tell.