Critically comment on the shifts in the functioning of the Indian Parliament in the last two decades. (Answer in 250 words)

- Critically comment on the shifts in the functioning of the Indian Parliament in the last two decades. (Answer in 250 words)
Introduction
Over two decades the Indian Parliament has moved from a deliberative to a declaratory legislature. It still legitimises law, but it increasingly ratifies rather than shapes it, and the shift is procedural rather than constitutional.

Body
1. Time has shrunk: the Lok Sabha met around 130 days a year in the 1950s and averaged roughly 55 in the seventeenth Lok Sabha. The NCRWC (2002) recommended a statutory minimum of 100 days, never adopted.
2. Legislation without scrutiny: a large share of bills now pass with under an hour of debate, the three farm laws of 2020 by voice vote amid protest, and the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act within two days.
3. The committee system has been bypassed: referral to departmentally related standing committees, the most valuable reform of 1993, fell from about 71 per cent of bills in the fifteenth Lok Sabha to under a fifth in the seventeenth.
4. Disruption and mass suspension: obstruction has become the opposition's default and suspension the majority's answer, culminating in the removal of 146 members in December 2023.
5. Executive-strengthening devices: ordinances under Article 123, the money bill route under Article 110, guillotined demands for grants, and skeletal statutes that push substance into delegated rules.
6. Accountability instruments weakened: Question Hour was cancelled outright in the 2020 monsoon session, and no private member's bill has become law since 1970.
7. What has improved: committee reports remain the most substantive work done, and the 91st Amendment (2003) capped the size of ministries.

Conclusion
The decline is real but reversible, because none of it is required by the Constitution. Guaranteed sitting days, mandatory committee referral and pre-legislative consultation would restore the deliberative function without amending a word.