ABSTRACT
The word ‘Parliament’ generates different images, imageries and narratives of democracy, contextually determined by local history, society and genealogies of power. Being sine qua non of democracy, it at once represents public space manufacturing legitimacy for government, governance and governmentality, and in the process assumingly represents critical mass of ‘public’ and ‘public good’. There are two broad types of accountability – (1) systemic accountability of the government to Parliament, and (2) representative responsibility of Parliament to the electors. Existing structure of Parliament is more concerned with the first one than evolving a mechanism of self-censorship or self-punishment for failure and non-performance. Within these frameworks of understanding, the chapter seeks to assess structure, achievement and failures of parliamentary accountability in India, both as moral agency and as a public space. The chapter concludes that parliamentary accountability in India has gradually become a misnomer.
