Oppositional Practice in India: Understanding Parliamentary Responses to Populism

The scholarship on the role of opposition in parliaments has highlighted a dual role for the opposition, that is to extract accountability from the government and to be prepared as the “government-in-waiting”. However, there are significant constraints on opposition in populist regimes. Specifically, alternation of governments becomes increasingly impossible as populist governments obstruct channels of political change giving rise to authoritarian and/or competitive authoritarian regimes. However, we discuss that the opposition can still play an important role in such contexts, using India as a case study. We discuss how oppositional practice of advocacy and de-acceleration can be a response to the populist politics of anti-pluralism; and immediacy and impatience. The de-accelerating effect consists of stalling, delaying and influencing of the legislative proposals of the government. We specifically highlight how the much-maligned parliamentary disruptions in India, which were understood to be creating a state of “gridlock and dysfunction”, can now present opportunities for resisting populist projects and protecting democracy and constitutionalism.