Why MPs Can’t Do Much

As we near the conclusion of the elections to the 18th Lok Sabha, a lot has been written and said about the increasingly ‘Presidential nature’ of the elections. 

The MPs and what they can do seem to matter less and less as the fight becomes primarily about who will be the Prime Minister. 

Many would argue that the individual Members of Parliament (MP) and who he or she is matters little. What matters is the political party and their leader and not much else. 

What Powers Does An MP Have?

Most of what an MP does is what they are able to do in Parliament  - raise issues of importance, ask questions and participate in the meetings of the various Parliamentary Committees. 

All these tasks are cardinal to the running of our parliamentary democracy, but do they matter independently to the constituents or to the constituency? 

One can argue that the MPs raising questions and relevant issues in zero-hour invites attention and benefits the constituents, but I would argue that the practical examples of this are far fewer and in between. 

This is not due to lackadaisical approach by any ruling party but the mentions of the number issues in a given day itself is gargantuan, so imagine the number of issues raised during a given session. 

The most important power the MP holds is their ability to vote inside the House; and the greatest limitation they face is at the same place as they have to vote as per the whip issued by their political party. 

This means that the individual MP’s position or stance is immaterial, the only real identity that matters is their political party. This is why individual MPs cannot really even lobby with the Government in power for favours like individual representatives in the US Congress do with the Administration. 

All of this is not to argue that MPs and the work they do don’t matter  - they do. The work that the MP can undertake is a crucial public good. But the direct benefits the MP can secure for their constituency is quite limited. 

While some MPs have chosen to highlight their ‘performance’ in Parliament by listing out numbers from their PRS page, it may not really matter to anyone besides constitutional patriots. 

What would matter to a constituent is likely what the MP has done for them - saying you asked the 120 odd questions may not matter much, but what counts is the work done in their constituency. 

There, the MP has discretion over just one aspect - which is the MP Local Area Development Scheme or MPLADS funds. 

MPLADS: Limitations Galore

The MPLAD Scheme was bought out in 1993, and initially provided an MP a sum of Rs 5 lakh per year, which was increased to Rs 1 crore in 1994-95 to the current Rs 5 crore per year. This amount doesn’t lapse and gets carried over; but the role of the MP is quite limited in this scenario too - the MP can only recommend that certain work be taken up, everything else after that is done by the District Authority, which is the District Magistrate (DM). As stated in point (iv) of the annual report of the MPLADS:

The DM can accept or reject the recommendations. This essentially means that the state government is the one holding the pen on MPLADS’s actual implementation. 

This has resulted in more than a few situations where the MPs have recommended certain works but the state governments do not implement them. 

The amount of MPLADS comes to a maximum of Rs 25 crore over 5 years, but this is dependent on various factors and more often than not, a significant amount still remains unutilised. 

For the 17th Lok Sabha MPs for example, around Rs 5,189 crore was available, and Rs 819 crore was unspent. 

Whether or not the MPLADS amount should be increased is another policy question in itself. Even in a case where the amount is increased significantly, the fact remains that the resources available to the state or central government dwarfs those any available to an MP. 

The Modi Government has sought since 2016 to involve MPs more in the oversight of development activities of their constituencies by creating the ‘District  Development Coordination and Monitoring Committees’ (DISHA) chaired by an MP with other elected representatives in a given district along with district officials. 

However these are really just ‘review meetings’ and the MP lacks any real authority in these meetings themselves. 

Given all this, an MP in his official capacity has more limitations than an MLA in helping constituents. Their approachability is limited considering the larger constituency they represent, and their ability to work with officials are limited by both their requirement to be in Delhi more often than not, along with their individual equations with the ruling state and central government. 

There are a lot more factors on how the MP is perceived of course, and their own status and relationship within the party or in society generally can play decisive roles in whether or not they end up being beneficial to their constituents. 

On average though, these MPs can unfortunately do little to improve their constituencies by themselves. Many of the constituents of our stellar Parliamentarians would not really have felt the benefit of their representation directly. 

Then the real question becomes - are we electing MPs for anything other than our choice on who governs the country? Almost doubtlessly, the largest impact of the choice made is that.