Parliamentary Democracy in India

Smt. Meira Kumar, Honourable Speaker of the Lok Sabha, whose son is currently studying for a PhD in History of Art at the University, had responded to an invitation to visit from the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, whom she met in Delhi last year and again last month.

An Indian politician and a five-time Member of Parliament, Meira Kumar was elected unopposed as the first woman Speaker of Lok Sabha on 3 June 2009. A lawyer and a former diplomat, she served as a Cabinet Minister in the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment of Manmohan Singh's Congress-led Government between 2004 and 2009.

At the Centre of South Asian Studies she met students and was shown some highlights from the Centre’s extensive archive of Indian private papers, manuscripts, photographs, letters and drawings.

She then spoke to a packed lecture theatre on the Sidgwick Site on the theme of ‘Parliamentary Democracy in India’.

“For more than four years I have been the Speaker of the Lok Sabha,” she said, “the House that represents one fifth of humanity, more than 1.2 billion people.

“I find Cambridge very familiar to the heat and dust of the electoral politics back home, and you would probably ask me how. Cambridge represents an intellectual vigour, ferocity, debates, discussions and discovery that aim to change the world for the better. Indian politics does the same. It embraces the dreams and aspirations of its people. It sends people’s representatives to Parliament so that they can change their lives for the better.”

In recalling her early life – she was born in 1945 - as the daughter of “an anti-colonial crusader” who became Deputy Prime Minister post-independence, she remembered how her home was an open house visited by men “with the distinct aura of freedom fighters. Pandit Nehru would smile and offer me cakes whenever my parents took me to his house. I now realise how fortunate I was to be growing up in such proximity to greatness. History was being scripted and, though a child, I was a witness to it. In the wake of independence, India was charting a new course for itself. All these men and women were engaged in laying a strong foundation for democracy in our land.”

She celebrated and discussed that democracy. “I wonder if any of you have seen our elections, especially in the interiors of rural India. During these elections we create what I call the largest level playing field in the world. Such is the magic of Indian democracy. In the last general elections nearly 60% of 700 million plus eligible voters voted with over a million Electronic Voting Machines to send 543 MPs to Lok Sabha. The voter turnout was more than the combined estimated population of the UK, Canada and the USA.”

She likened the often heated exchanges over which she presides in the Parliament building in Delhi to an ocean at high tide. “One has to patiently wait for it to calm down and calm down it does. Once the turbulence has subsided we skip lunch and sit late into the night to finish the pending work.

“The discussions, punctuated with wit and repartee, are well researched and of a very high level. Our House functions in 22 languages with simultaneous interpretations in Hindi and English. Members fight vehemently in the House and have sweets together in the Central Hall. In whatever they do or don’t do, they reflect the collective will of the people of India.”

Her well-received speech was followed by a suitably spontaneous and lively question and answer session in which she provided an engaging insight into the nuances  of running the Lok Sabha.