Parliamentary debates are the essence of democracy

livemint.com:

The just-concluded general elections have once again proven the vitality of Indian democracy. The democratic process has established that the democratic institutions of this country are more than capable of giving all sections of society a voice, especially the marginalized. With the formation of a new government, parliamentary processes have kicked in.

With that, the formal process of political communication between electors and the elected has also begun. Parliamentary debates are an important element of this. Elected representatives of the people make their position on various issues official by engaging in debates on the floor of the two Houses of Parliament.

There is no denying the fact that in this day-and-age of electronic media, both conventional and social, there is no dearth of instruments available for political messaging. This has led some political commentators to question the relevance of parliamentary debates. They contend that these often repeat what has already been said in the public sphere by political campaigners, party spokespersons and Members of Parliament (MPs), and there is nothing new that these debates offer in terms of either political positions or information.

They also question the ‘deliberative effect’ of such debates, since instances of a climbdown or revision of a previously-held position by an opponent in the light of what German political thinker Jurgen Habermas called “the better argument" are few and far between. This might be true to an extent, as parliamentary debates are no paragons of Habermasian virtue—which aims for an ‘Ideal Speech Situation,’ where participants are swayed by reason and reason alone. Politics being ‘essentially contested,’ such a situation is neither feasible