3 min readAug 14, 2026 06:00 AM IST First published on: Aug 14, 2026 at 06:00 AM ISTThe Monsoon Session that drew to a close on Thursday was the first held after students’ protests convulsed a nation and forced a Union minister’s resignation. The heavy-handed police crackdown on protesting students marching to Parliament on the first day of the session was a turning point in the agitation. Against that backdrop, consider this: Lok Sabha passed 11 bills, of which, according to PRS Legislative Research, nine were passed without any MP, other than the minister concerned, speaking on it. Only the Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Amendment Bill 2026 saw a detailed discussion — nearly 11 hour-long, with 48 MPs participating. But the bill, which hardens the 2024 law meant to deal with exam leaks and irregularities, was an inadequate response to the issues framed by the students’ agitation. This is because the protests have turned the spotlight on structural problems in the education system, and on the ways in which they overhang and cramp the young’s sense of the future. Those larger and deeper issues were not deliberated upon by Parliament – far from it. In fact, Parliament abysmally failed to step up to the special challenge before it – to open its doors wider to issues raised by young citizens, to bridge the gulf that seemed to have opened up in the last few days and weeks between sadak and sansad (street and institution).The failure and the lost opportunity must be owned by both government and Opposition, the government more than the Opposition. It is the government’s responsibility, after all, to ensure that the House runs, and that legislation is debated and discussed, not just passed by voice vote, by dint of an arithmetic majority. For this, the government needs to show accommodation, and generosity. Instead, the Prime Minister and the Home Minister stayed away from the House — Amit Shah’s offer to sit through a discussion on the students’ protests and to respond to it came much too belatedly. And MPs of the ruling coalition faced off with Opposition MPs in an unseemly war of the placards outside the Parliament gates. Of course, this is not the first time that an entire session has been written off — nor, sadly, will it be the last. But given that the students’ agitation has raised fundamental questions, this Monsoon session looked especially arid.AdvertisementThe issues that were not debated in Parliament have not gone away. They are still there – from demands of accountability for the use of excessive force against students to allegations of theft of donations at the Ram temple in Ayodhya, and the long-term education and jobs crises. The onus is on the people’s representatives, in both government and Opposition, to find ways to show that they are responsible and responsive. That is Parliament’s promise — not just the numbers it seats as the delimitation debate makes it out to be, but its willingness to listen, something this session lost sight of.