Say you are a member of Parliament (MP), one of the 545 in the Lok Sa­bha or the 245 in the Rajya Sabha. Your prima­ry job is to legislate; in other words, write or introduce bills, debate them in Parliament and ultimately, vote on them to decide whether the bill will become the law of the land. Now, consider this onerous task. Parliament ta­kes up, on average, 70 bills a year, each bill being roughly 40 pages. That’s 2,800 pages of legalese to understand, digest and vote on. Challenging for any scholar of law, let alone, 790 MPs!

That’s the raison d’être of ‘PRS Legislative Research’, a non-profit organisation (N­GO), founded in 2005 by CV Madhukar. Unlike its cryptic name, its main goal is to prepare simple and comprehensible ‘legislative briefs’ on bills that are tabled in Parliament and share them with MPs, journalists and NGOs.

PRS briefs do not just summarise a bill, but also, include a well-researched analysis of the key issues and debates that may require due consideration before a bill is voted on. For instance, it is worth looking at the PRS brief on the Lok Pal Bill at www.prsi­ndia.org, importantly, available both in English and Hindi. It includes a summary table on “Differing views on the basic framework of the Lok Pal” that is at the heart of the government versus civil society versions. In addition, the site itself serves as a single- window for the original text of any bill or standing committee report.

Madhukar provides a rationale, “No individual MP, however educated, can be an expert in all issues that come up in Parliament. Our MPs do not have qualified research staff working for them. They need better research tools to take more informed decisions on issues of law and policy. This is how the PRS idea originated.”

While PRS automatically sends its briefs to all members of Parliament, MPs are increasingly approaching PRS to meet their needs. According to the organisation, more than 300 MPs from across 22 political parties are known to reach out to PRS for research inputs on a range of policy and legislative issues. “One way the demand has been increasing is by word of mouth, and the consistent and proactive engagement of the PRS team in finding new ways to add value to the MPs’ research needs,” explains Madhukar.

An organisation that aims to support research needs of the entire political spectrum has to remain fiercely non-partisan. So, how does PRS achieve this, given that it is an NGO that depends on do­nors? Commenting on the in­ner workings of PRS, Madhukar noted, “Organisations that fund PRS have no information about any issue we are working on except once a quarter, when we report what we have done. We also have a policy that no funder, however big, will have a seat on the board. We put this in place to ensure that funders are also not directors who oversee the work of PRS. Third, the multi-layered internal review process for our research products have evolved over the past six years, which, has helped us ensure that there are no biases in our reports.”

Madhukar leads a core team of around 20 rese­archers with considerable international exposure. His ow­n background is an eclectic mix of time in the corporate, non-profit and policy worlds. An engineer from BMS College of Engineering, turned MBA, specialising in finance from the University of Houston, his first job was with ICICI Securities. Exposure to several non-profit institutions at ICICI led him to volunteer for Pratham in its early days and then, on deputation, full-time for four years. Upon Azim Premji’s invitation, he moved to Bangalore to help set up the Azim Premji Foundation for three years. Next stop was the Ke­nnedy School of Government at Harvard for a master’s degree in public administration. He returned to Delhi right after to set up PRS, for which, he has won several prestigious fellowships, honours and was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Fo­rum.

Clearly, PRS is filling a gap in the policy and law-making process. In addition to educating MPs, PRS briefs are sent to “700 journalists and 1,000 non-governmental organisations around the country”. Yet, the troubling fact is that PRS is donor-dependent. Madhukar is well aware of its dependency, “Given that we are a non-profit organisation, we do need to find ways of continually raising funds to support our work. It would be helpful if the Indian Parliament were to support our work,” he says.

But does the government anywhere in the world support non-partisan, research-based analyses of bills? Yes, says Madhukar, “In the United States, the Congress has set up excellent institutions to support its work. The Congre­ssional research service, the Congressional budget office and the government accountability office are all well-functioning and widely respected institutions.” Is PRS a seed for similar institutions in India?

(The writer is a social entrepreneur and is on the faculty of IIM-Ahmedabad)