Network Analysis of Parliamentary Standing Committees in India

Introduction

The Legislative branch of the Government in India, also known as the Indian Parliament, is divided into two Chambers – Upper (Rajya Sabha) and Lower (Lok Sabha). The members of the Lok Sabha are directly elected by the people of India through popular vote, usually conducted at an interval of every five years. In contrast, the members of the Rajya Sabha are elected by an electoral college comprised of elected members of the Lok Sabha and various State Legislations in India.

A vast majority of the business of both the Lok Sabha as well as the Rajya Sabha, are transacted through House Committees, known as Parliamentary Standing Committees. These Committees comprise of the members of the respective Houses of Parliament. Sometimes, the Members of the Parliament serve as a part of more than one Committee. The various Committees of the Indian Parliament are bifurcated under the following heads –

• Financial Committees – comprising of 3 Committees
• Department Related Committees – comprising of 24 Committees
• Other Parliamentary Standing Committees – comprising of 17 Committees
• Ad hoc Committees – constituted from time to time on a need basis.

Debate and discussion are the central themes of any democratic set up. Thus the efficiency of the Committee system of Indian Parliament is highly dependent upon the interactions of the various Committee Members, both amongst themselves as well as with Members of other Committees.

Research Questions:

1. Are the Committees successful in collaborating with each other in tackling policy and legislative challenges from multiple perspectives?
2. Are there any distinct and identifiable communication structures within the individual Committees to facilitate idea exchange?
3. Would creating a new committee comprising of the leadership of each of the individual Committees would yield greater efficiency in the working of the Indian Parliament?
4. Within each of these Committees, are there any cliques and /or clusters that are defined by political, linguistic or regional affiliations?
5. How involved are the women Members of Parliament in the workings of these Committees? Are there any leadership roles that the women Members assume in the workings of these Committees? What are the Department Related Standing Committees where women Members play a leadership role?

Hypothesis:

It is hypothesized that –

• The level of collaboration between the various Committees, which would be indicated by the number of ties between the constituent members of these Committees, would be lower in cases of Committees belonging to different Houses of the Parliament.
• The analysis would reveal the absence of any identifiable communication structures within each individual Committee, leading to impediment in communication flow.
•  It would also be observed that within each individual Committees, there would be fewer ties between members belonging to different political or geographic affiliations.
• The analysis would also reveal that very few women Members of Parliament occupy leadership roles within the Committee structures. Closer scrutiny should reveal that the women leadership positions would be confined to the Department Related Committees of Social Justice and Empowerment, and Health and Family Welfare.
• The analysis would also indicate that creation of a new committee would lead to a greater discourse and interaction between the various Committees, thereby leading to a greater efficiency in the workings of the Parliament.

Data Collection:

The website of the Indian Parliament[1] contains the list of all the Parliamentary Standing Committees, along –with the details of their constitution as well as their respective leaders. Additionally, the website of the Indian Parliament would provide us with information pertaining to the political party affiliation of each such Member, along-with the constituency they represent in the House.

In order to determine the network ties between the Members of the Parliamentary Standing Committees, we would conduct a short survey through the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs, Government of India[2]. The questions that the survey would capture the data on the following attributes, among others - 

• Other members within the same Parliamentary Standing Committee that the respondent member has the most frequent interactions with.
• Other members across other Parliamentary Standing Committees that the respondent member has the most frequent interactions with.
• How frequently do the constituent Members of each individual Parliamentary Standing Committee interact with the Chairperson of the given Committee?
• How frequently the Chairpersons of any given Parliamentary Standing Committees interact with Chairpersons of the other Parliamentary Standing Committees?

All such Members of the Parliament, who are also members of one or more Parliamentary Standing Committees would be requested to respond to this survey.

Network Analysis:

In order to conduct social network analysis of the Parliamentary Standing Committees of the Indian Parliament, the data captured from the above-mentioned survey and the website of the Indian Parliament[3] would be examined through UCINET and Netdraw applications. The individual Members of Parliament surveyed would be assigned as Nodes, while the data such as what Parliamentary Standing Committee they are members of, the political party they belong to, the State or Region they represent in the House, etc. would constitute the attribute set. The cohesion measures such as average degree, density, degree centralization, fragmentation, etc., of the whole network obtained through UCINET would provide us with a bird’s eye perspective on the communication dynamics of the network of the Parliamentary Standing Committees in India. Using Netdraw, we would be able to map the network of the Members of Parliamentary Standing Committees in India, which would indicate the ties they form which each other against the backdrop of the above-mentioned attributes. Using Netdraw, we would also be able to analyze the network with reference to various centrality measures such as – degree centrality, closeness centrality, betweeness centrality and eigenvector centrality.

Network Analysis of the Parliamentary Standing Committees of India through UCINET and Netdraw would allow us to test the hypothesis proposed by me above. Depending upon the outcome of the analysis, we would be able to suggest reform measures that would make the Parliamentary Standing Committee system in India more efficient in achieving the objectives it seeks to achieve.   

Conclusion

In the event my hypothesis is found to be true upon conducting the network analysis as mentioned above, I will make recommendations –

1. Constituting a new central committee comprising of the Chairpersons of all Parliamentary Standing Committees.
2. Creation of a permanent and robust network of sub-committees within each Parliamentary Standing Committee in order to streamline the flow of communication within each Committee.
3. Restructuring the composition of Parliamentary Standing Committees with a view to make them more diverse in terms of political, linguistic  and regional affiliations.
4. Promoting leadership among the women members by earmarking the Chairperson positions in a few of Committees on rotation basis for women.

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[1] http://parliamentofindia.nic.in

[2] http://mpa.nic.in

[3] Supra