FE Editorial : Legislating change
The Financial Express: Dec 22 2012, 02:16 IST
The final Parliament numbers may show no major change in terms of the number of hours our MPs worked in the just-concluded winter session—just 7 of 25 Bills listed for clearing were passed, leaving 104 uncleared Bills at the end of the session. Just 53% of the Lok Sabha’s time was used productively—58% for the Rajya Sabha—making this the lowest since Budget 2009 except for Winter 2010 and Monsoon 2012. Relations between the BJP and the Congress have been even more frosty than in the past, with the Congress accusing the BJP of not wanting to do business and the BJP accusing the Congress of wanting to bypass Parliament all the time—indeed, given the high-profile Gujarat elections and the very personal attacks by Narendra Modi, the relations would have got even worse.
Yet, despite all of this, Parliament managed to pass some critical Bills, including those that allowed the change in FEMA to facilitate FDI in multi-brand retail as well as the Banking Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2012, that allows RBI to now hand out some more banking licences. While the former is important, in the long run, for fixing India’s supply chain for both manufacturing and agriculture, the latter is vital if credit growth is to continue—PSUs supply the bulk of loans today, but unless they get R4-5 lakh crore of equity infusion from a cash-strapped government, this will slow down; the only other option is to get additional banks in. The retail FDI Bill, it is true, got passed despite
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