Elected, But Absent

For four consecutive days, I found myself seated in the visitors’ gallery of a legislative assembly that could have belonged anywhere and nowhere at once. Officially, it was the Budget Session- an annual ritual of numbers, promises, projections, and procedural solemnity. Unofficially, it felt like theatre. Not the refined theatre of disciplined actors and crafted scripts, but the chaotic improvisation of a troupe that had forgotten its audience. Let me be clear at the outset: what follows is fiction. The characters are invented. The setting is imagined. The incidents are narrated through the lens of literary construction. Yet, like all serious fiction, it is interested in something real- the anatomy of neglect inside institutions that claim to represent the people.

On the first day, the House assembled with ceremonial gravity. Files were arranged. Microphones were tested. The Speaker’s chair stood elevated, symbolic of order. The Budget documents- voluminous, glossy, intimidating- were stacked with bureaucratic pride. Outside the building, citizens waited behind barricades, clutching petitions, memoranda, and fading hope. Inside, the air-conditioning hummed with indifference.

A representative from a distant mountainous constituency rose to speak. He had travelled overnight, I was told, crossing broken roads and frozen passes. His speech was neither flamboyant nor poetic. It was plain, almost painfully so. He spoke of collapsed irrigation canals, of unpaid teachers, of a hospital without oxygen cylinders, of families who had not received compensation after floods swallowed their orchards. He spoke slowly, occasionally mispronouncing technical terms. He read from handwritten notes.

But the House was elsewhere.

Two rows behind him, a group of legislators leaned toward one another, exchanging jokes. A few scrolled through their phones. One laughed loudly at something entirely unrelated to the speech. Another was preoccupied with arranging an upcoming luncheon meeting. The words “public grievance” floated into the air and fell without landing.

The custodian of order occasionally murmured, “Order, please,” but the instruction seemed ceremonial rather than corrective. The man continued speaking, not because he was being heard, but because he believed he must.

In democratic theory, representation is sacred. Representatives do not merely speak; they embody the anxieties, frustrations, and aspirations of thousands. When they stand, an entire geography stands with them. When they are  ignored, that geography is ignored.

By the second day, the pattern was unmistakable. Speeches were delivered into a chamber that functioned less as a forum and more as an echo chamber-sound without reception. A legislator from a border constituency described schools that shut down every winter because there were no teachers willing to serve in remote areas. Another raised the issue of land acquisition disputes that had left farmers stranded between law and livelihood. Their interventions were substantive, grounded, and uncomfortable.

Yet the atmosphere remained curiously detached. The House had perfected the art of procedural participation without cognitive engagement. Members signed attendance registers, occupied chairs, occasionally thumped desks- but rarely listened.

Listening is an underrated democratic virtue. It is slower than speaking and far less glamorous. It demands patience, humility, and intellectual openness. It requires the acknowledgement that someone else’s reality may be inconvenient to one’s political comfort. In this fictional assembly, listening had become optional.

On the third day, a particular figure began to dominate the theatre. Let us call him Legislator X. He possessed the confidence of someone accustomed to impunity. He moved across the floor of the House with casual entitlement, occupying seats that were not his, interrupting speakers mid-sentence, shouting objections that were neither procedural nor relevant.

When others spoke, he scoffed audibly. When they persisted, he raised his voice. He addressed colleagues by their first names, sometimes mockingly. The Speaker’s repeated reminders seemed to dissolve before reaching him.

It was not merely his volume that disturbed me. It was the permissiveness surrounding him. No serious reprimand followed his disruptions. No structured enforcement of decorum was visible. His conduct, gradually normalized, began to shape the atmosphere of the House.

There is a danger in the normalization of disorder. Once rules are bent for one individual, they lose moral authority for everyone else. When interruptions go unchecked, they become a method. When shouting replaces rebuttal, argument loses its place.

Legislator X appeared to believe that presence was power. That dominance of sound equated to dominance of substance. In doing so, he exemplified a broader shift in political culture: from deliberation to performance, from persuasion to intimidation.

On the fourth day, something subtle but revealing occurred. A young legislator-perhaps newly elected-attempted to respond to an allegation made during debate. He began cautiously, citing data, referring to departmental reports, appealing to facts. Legislator X interrupted within seconds. The Speaker intervened weakly. The young member paused, looked around the chamber, and resumed with visible hesitation.

Around him, conversations continued. Side meetings were convened mid-session. Laughter erupted sporadically. The speech ended not with applause or rebuttal, but with indifference. From the gallery, the question became unavoidable: If they are not listening to one another, how will they listen to those outside these walls?

Democracy is not sustained by elections alone. It is sustained by habits- habits of attention, of accountability, of intellectual seriousness. The Budget Session is not merely an accounting exercise; it is a moment when the moral priorities of a government are laid bare. Every allocation reflects a choice. Every omission carries consequences.

But numbers require interpretation. They require scrutiny. They demand debate.

In this fictional House, the debate seemed procedural rather than philosophical. Members cited allocations without interrogating outcomes. They referenced schemes without evaluating implementation. They invoked development as a slogan rather than as a measurable transformation.

One might argue that political culture everywhere has grown noisier. That disruption is a form of resistance. That theatricality attracts media attention. But there is a difference between dissent and disorder. Dissent is principled. Disorder is indulgent.

The tragedy of this imagined assembly was not that disagreements existed; it was that engagement did not. Outside the complex, citizens continued to queue. Some had travelled from remote villages. A group of contract workers waited with placards demanding regularization. A delegation of students sought scholarships that had been delayed for months. Elderly pensioners clutched documents in plastic folders. They waited not for spectacle, but for response.

Inside, spectacle thrived.

It would be unfair to claim that every member was indifferent. There were moments- fleeting but sincere- when certain legislators leaned forward, asked pointed questions, and demanded clarifications. There were instances of genuine cross-party agreement on specific issues. Yet these moments were islands in a sea of distraction.

What does it mean when legislative space becomes performative rather than participatory?

First, it signals a crisis of seriousness. Governance requires sustained attention. Budgetary allocations must be tracked beyond announcement. Committees must function beyond formality. Questions must be asked not merely to score points, but to extract accountability.

Second, it signals a crisis of equality. When one member is allowed to dominate through volume and interruption, others- particularly those less seasoned or less connected- are implicitly marginalized. Representation becomes hierarchical rather than horizontal.

Third, it signals a crisis of trust. Citizens observe these proceedings- directly or through media- and draw conclusions about institutional integrity. If the House appears inattentive to itself, it appears inattentive to the people.

Political institutions survive not because they are flawless, but because they are perceived as sincere. When sincerity erodes, cynicism fills the vacuum.

By the end of the fourth day, the choreography of indifference had become predictable. Speeches began, interruptions followed, attention drifted, and the session adjourned with formal courtesy. The Budget documents remained thick; the deliberation felt thin.

Fiction allows exaggeration, but the deeper concern here is structural rather than personal. An assembly is designed as a site of structured disagreement. It exists to convert social conflict into legislative clarity. When it fails to listen, it fails to translate.

The irony is profound: inside a building constructed to amplify voices, voices are drowned. One might ask whether this fictional account is too harsh. Whether it overlooks the constraints legislators face- the pressures of party discipline, the demands of constituency management, the limited time available for debate. These constraints are real. Yet they do not absolve the fundamental responsibility to engage. Engagement is not optional in a democracy; it is foundational.

If a member cannot listen to a colleague describing a hospital without oxygen, what moral claim does he retain to represent his own voters? If interruptions become routine, what space remains for reasoned persuasion? If the Speaker’s authority is symbolic rather than operational, what prevents gradual institutional decay? Institutions rarely collapse dramatically. They erode quietly- through tolerated misconduct, normalized distraction, and incremental indifference.

The fictional House I observed over four days did not implode. It functioned, adjourned, reconvened. Bills were tabled. Responses were recorded. Yet beneath the surface, something essential felt fragile.

The health of a legislature cannot be measured solely by the number of bills passed or the duration of sessions. It must be measured by the quality of attention its members grant one another. Attention is respect in action. It is the recognition that even opposing views deserve engagement.

In the end, the most alarming feature of the session was not the shouting of Legislator X, nor the gossiping clusters, nor even the procedural laxity. It was the normalization of not listening. When indifference becomes culture, accountability becomes an exception.

As I left the assembly premises on the fourth evening, the winter light was fading. Outside the gates, a small group of citizens remained, waiting for a legislator who had promised to meet them after adjournment. They stood patiently, files in hand. Their faith in the institution, at least outwardly, remained intact.

Inside the chamber, the microphones had been switched off. The echoes, however, lingered. But  it asks a question that the house  must answer: If representatives do not hear one another within the House, who, then, is truly being heard?

Zahid Sultan, Kashmir Based Independent Researcher.