Watching a TV debate, Umesh says the opposition only obstructs and serves no purpose

Why

Umesh is describing what he actually sees, and he is not imagining it — shouting and walkouts are real, and they are what cameras choose to show. But he is judging the whole job by its loudest minute. The opposition's steady work is quieter: questioning ministers on the floor so that answers go on record, examining bills line by line in committees where members of all parties sit together, and forcing the government to explain where public money went. A government that knows it will be questioned prepares differently from one that knows it will not. And the opposition is where the alternative is kept ready, so that losing an election does not mean starting a country from nothing. Test: read what a parliamentary committee did to a bill, rather than what the evening debate looked like. Bharti is right — obstruction is a tactic you can criticise, but scrutiny is the function, and without it a majority answers to no one.