December 3, 2025 01:39 PM IST
First published on: Dec 3, 2025 at 07:12 AM IST
In the past decade, the scope and complexity of governance in India have expanded at an unprecedented pace. This demands both political commitment and deep technical understanding. State legislatures need to evolve into robust, research-driven and high-performing institutions capable of sustained scrutiny, meaningful debate and accountable lawmaking. Instead of being platforms for informed discussion and consensus-building, assemblies often find themselves paralysed by ideological divides.
This culture of disruption diminishes productivity and weakens public faith in legislative institutions. Recent reviews of state legislatures show that assemblies, on average, meet for 20-25 days a year. If our legislative assemblies are to remain temples of democracy, they must restore a sense of discipline, dialogue and dignity. Strengthening functioning is essential to ensuring that governance keeps pace with the aspirations of a rapidly changing India.
Legislative quality influences law-making, oversight of the executive, public engagement and delivery of development outcomes. Currently, there are limited ways, mostly through RTIs, by which the state legislature’s quality and innovation can be measured. There is a need for an institutional mechanism through which state legislatures can assess their functioning, identify gaps, and strengthen their institutional performance. Measuring, tracking and comparing state-level legislative performance is necessary to evaluate democratic performance within India’s federal structure. Recognising this need, the National Legislative Index (NLI) seeks to provide a systematic, data-driven means of evaluating legislatures.
The NLI, to be published annually, proposes India’s first state-wise benchmarking system to measure the productivity, transparency, and innovation of state assemblies and legislative councils. The NLI will incentivise healthy competition among states and accelerate the adoption of best practices (procedural, digital, and institutional). Its core objectives are to provide a comprehensive benchmarking mechanism; to distil a transparent annual score (0-100) for each legislature; to build national comparison around legislative quality and innovation; to identify gaps and challenges and thereby inform corrective reforms; to foster peer learning by highlighting inter-state disparities; to strengthen the role of the Speaker’s office as a driver of institutional excellence, and to encourage institutional reforms, digital and participatory practices. The NLI will broadly look at indicators such as the number of sitting days and duration of each session; the percentage of bills referred to committees; the average time taken to pass bills; the hours devoted to question-hour and floor debate. It shall also evaluate transparency, digitisation, technological integration, and institutional efforts for knowledge preservation. These are concrete, transparent measures that convert process into public information, without prescribing substance or policy stances.
By promoting longer, better-informed, and more inclusive debates, it can encourage states to increase sittings, reduce disruptions, and build effective research and reference systems in collaboration with Parliament. Strengthening the dignity and productivity of our legislative assemblies is not a matter of partisanship; it is a shared national responsibility. When Houses function efficiently, with greater use of technology and wider participation of women and youth, they reaffirm the faith of citizens in democratic institutions. Through the NLI, India has the opportunity to make its legislatures not only temples of democracy in name, but also in spirit — combining decorum, deliberation, and digital readiness to meet the challenges of a changing era.
Over the past few years, India’s legislatures have made notable progress in adopting modern practices such as paperless proceedings, live streaming, and digitisation of records. However, this progress remains uneven across states and UTs, underlining the need for a common benchmarking framework. The NLI aligns closely with the vision of “One Nation, One Legislative Platform”, which seeks to digitally integrate legislative bodies across the country. Together, these initiatives will not only promote procedural uniformity and information sharing but also enable citizens, researchers, and lawmakers to access data, debates, and committee reports on a single digital interface, making the functioning of legislatures more transparent, connected, and participatory.
The writer is Speaker, Delhi Legislative Assembly
