In the early weeks of March 2026, the Goa Legislative Assembly witnessed a troubling spectacle: a full Budget Session, originally slated to run until 27 March, was abruptly curtailed. The government justified the move by citing the Model Code of Conduct triggered by the impending Ponda bypoll. Yet the outcome was stark. The budget was passed with minimal debate on demands for grants, opposition voices were largely sidelined, and the people’s representatives were denied the time to scrutinise spending priorities, tax proposals, or policy gaps. To many observers, this was not prudent governance but a calculated retreat from responsibility, an executive manoeuvre that treated the legislature as an inconvenient formality rather than the beating heart of democracy. Such curtailment does more than inconvenience ; it strikes at the very foundations of parliamentary democracy as envisioned by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar and the deliberative public sphere theorised by Jürgen Habermas. Together, these two thinkers offer a powerful lens through which we may expose the deeper democratic injury inflicted in Goa.
Ambedkar, chief architect of the Indian Constitution, was unambiguous that democracy is not merely the counting of votes on election day but the continuous, rigorous working of institutions through debate and accountability. In the Constituent Assembly, he repeatedly warned against any tendency to reduce Parliament or state legislatures to rubber-stamp bodies. He insisted that a legislature must have adequate time and space to examine every demand for grants, question executive proposals, and ventilate public grievances. Without this, he argued, the Constitution becomes a mere “grammar of politics” devoid of life. Ambedkar drew a sharp distinction between formal democracy (elections and majorities) and substantive democracy (deliberation that keeps power on trial). He feared that executive convenience could erode legislative sovereignty, turning elected representatives into passive endorsers of government’s will. In Goa, the decision to truncate the session and rush through the entire budget rather than seeking a Vote on Account embodies precisely the danger Ambedkar foresaw. The government did not merely shorten proceedings; it pre-empted the constitutional obligation (under Articles 202 and 203) to allow full financial scrutiny. By invoking the Model Code of Conduct as a shield, the ruling dispensation appeared to flee the very accountability that Dr. Ambedkar placed at the centre of republican governance. Constitutional morality, for Dr. Ambedkar, demanded that those in power respect not only the letter of the law but its spirit, ensuring that institutions function as arenas of reasoned contestation rather than theatres of convenience. The curtailed session fails this test. It signals that the executive views the Assembly not as a partner in governance but as an obstacle to be managed, thereby weakening the democratic engine Dr. Ambedkar so carefully designed.
Jürgen Habermas complements Ambedkar’s constitutional critique with a theory of communicative action that places deliberation at the core of legitimate authority. In his discourse theory of democracy, legitimacy does not flow automatically from electoral victory or procedural compliance. It arises only when decisions emerge from free, uncoerced, and inclusive argumentation in the public sphere. Habermas distinguishes between strategic action where actors pursue power or self-interest through manipulation and communicative action, where participants orient themselves toward mutual understanding through the “force of the better argument.” Legislatures, in this view, are not mere voting machines but institutionalised sites of the public sphere where citizens, through their representatives, test claims, challenge assumptions, and refine collective will. When debate is curtailed, the ideal speech situation collapses: power displaces reason, and legitimacy evaporates. The Goa government’s move exemplifies strategic action at its clearest. By limiting time for discussion on critical budgetary heads, education, health, infrastructure, tourism etc., the executive prevented MLAs from subjecting official narratives to rigorous cross-examination. Opposition parties could not adequately highlight alleged fiscal mismanagement, environmental concerns, or regional disparities besides argue for the important bills that were waiting to be tabled. The public, whose taxes fund the budget, was effectively denied a transparent window into how its money would be spent. Habermas would see this as a distortion of the public sphere: citizens are reduced to spectators rather than co-authors of policy. In a healthy democracy, the legislature must facilitate ongoing discourse between state and society; when it is silenced, the gap between formal legality and genuine legitimacy widens. The appearance of “running away from responsibility” is not mere optics, it is the logical consequence of replacing communicative reason with administrative fiat.
The convergence of Ambedkar and Habermas reveals the full gravity of the episode. Ambedkar supplies the institutional safeguard: legislatures must be allowed to function fully lest democracy degenerate into elected oligarchy. Habermas supplies the normative standard: legitimacy requires genuine deliberation, not its simulation. In Goa, both standards were breached. The budget, however technically legal, lacks the moral and discursive weight that sustained debate would have conferred. Citizens are left wondering whether allocations reflect careful scrutiny or partisan expediency. Moreover, the timing immediately before a bypoll fuels the suspicion that electoral calculations trumped democratic duty. This is not an isolated procedural lapse; it sets a precedent that could embolden future governments to treat sessions as optional when political convenience demands. Smaller states like Goa, already vulnerable to executive overreach due to limited legislative strength, suffer disproportionately when deliberation is sacrificed. The long-term cost is a citizenry increasingly alienated from the very institutions meant to represent them.
Critics may counter that sessions are routinely adjusted and that the Model Code of Conduct imposes genuine constraints. Yet such defences miss the point. Ambedkar never suggested that democracy is frictionless; he insisted that its success depends on the willingness of power-holders to endure friction, public questioning, prolonged debate, even discomfort. Habermas similarly acknowledged real-world imperfections but maintained that institutions must be designed and operated to approximate the ideal of undistorted communication as closely as possible. A government that chooses curtailment over creative accommodation (such as extending sittings within permissible limits or prioritising essential debate) chooses convenience over conviction. It signals contempt for the very idea that elected representatives owe the public a thorough accounting.
Goa’s truncated session is therefore not merely an administrative decision but a symptom of a deeper democratic malaise: the creeping substitution of executive efficiency for legislative accountability. Ambedkar would have called it a betrayal of constitutional morality. Habermas would diagnose it as a failure of communicative legitimacy. Together, they remind us that democracy dies not with dramatic coups but with quiet erosions like shortened debates, muted voices, budgets passed in haste. If Goan democracy is to retain its vitality, the Assembly must be restored as a forum of robust contestation. Citizens, civil society, and the judiciary have the challenge to insist that sessions are not privileges to be doled out at executive pleasure but rights to be fiercely guarded. Only then can the promise of substantive self-government, so eloquently defended by Ambedkar and Habermas, be harvested in practice.
