EARLY in November India’s government took a momentous decision by abruptly voiding 86% of the cash in circulation. The effects have been painful: businesses cannot pay workers or suppliers; day-long queues stretch outside banks as citizens jostle for new notes that cannot be printed fast enough to meet demand. The government said the trouble would be over by year’s end. It is clear now that the hurt will last far longer. Few in India can talk about anything else—yet India’s parliament has barely managed to discuss it at all.

In any other parliamentary democracy, such a glaring bungle would have prompted a strong legislative response. To cause a sharp slowdown in a perfectly healthy economy would invite fierce questions and perhaps a vote of no confidence. Governments have fallen for lesser goofs.

But in the world’s biggest democracy, things are different. True, India’s bicameral parliament did convene in mid-November for its month-long winter session, and opposition MPs loudly attacked “demonetisation”. Yet nothing like a formal parliamentary debate has taken place. Narendra Modi, the prime minister, has neither explained his policy nor faced questions on it in either the 545-member Lok Sabha or in the 245-seat upper house, the Rajya Sabha.

In fact, only two minor bills have been debated and passed in the parliamentary session that is due to conclude on December 16th. Instead, MPs spent much of their time shouting at each other about demonetisation, obliging the speakers of both houses to suspend proceedings repeatedly. Both Mr Modi and the most prominent opposition leader, Rahul Gandhi, who is vice-president of the Congress Party, comically chorused charges that neither one was allowing the other to speak, even as their parties traded blame over the legislative logjam. And to make matters even worse, both the government and its opponents took their fight outside parliament, mutually leaking news stories that appeared to implicate their opponents in corruption.

Sadly, the parliament’s failure to address such a crucial issue is not unusual. In other years, entire month-long sessions have passed with no business getting done at all. Mr Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) blames its foes for resorting to “disruption”, but when in opposition it did exactly the same thing. And whereas rowdy parliaments are common enough, an additional problem with India’s is that its two houses meet only rarely. In the 1950s, soon after independence, their three annual sessions typically added up to 140 days a year, not unlike the parliaments of, say, Britain or Canada. The average is now closer to 60 (see chart). India’s many state legislatures are even lazier: most of them meet for fewer than 30 days a year. The assembly in one state, Haryana, met for just 12 days on average in 2011-2015, says M.R. Madhavan, the president of PRS Legislative Research, a privately funded watchdog in Delhi. Haryana’s debates are so perfunctory that its legislators managed to pass 14 bills in just 90 minutes at one point this year. There are many reasons for the creakiness of India’s democratic institutions. One of them is a constitution that puts more power in the hands of executive and judicial branches than in other democracies, where legislatures tend to be more powerful. It is no coincidence that whereas America’s Congress grandly occupies Capitol Hill, the palatial residence of India’s figurehead president, built for a British viceroy, looks down from the hill it shares with the main ministries upon the lowly houses of parliament (pictured). As in the days of the Raj, it is India’s government that summons parliament and determines how many days it will sit. When it is not in session, the government can pass ordinances that have the force of law, which provides an incentive to keep MPs idle. Parliament must approve ordinances within six months, but governments can sometimes get around this. Four times Mr Modi’s government has renewed an ordinance perpetuating the confiscation of “enemy property”, in spite of opposition from the Rajya Sabha and even though Indian citizens have won title to such inherited properties in court. Indian governments can also sign foreign treaties without parliamentary approval.

The rules of the parliament itself diminish its democratic role. Prime ministers are under no obligation to answer questions themselves; they can delegate someone else. Unusually, too, a constitutional amendment from the 1980s gives immense power to party whips: it provides that MPs who vote against their own party may lose their seat. “Party leaders love the anti-defection rule,” says Mr Madhavan, “but it means MPs have no choice but to follow orders—they represent neither their own conscience nor constituents.”

Shashi Tharoor, a Congress MP, says the rule makes sense when weak coalition governments are trying to hold together, but is counterproductive when, as now, the ruling party has a strong outright majority. “I have always argued the first priority is to represent voters,” says Mr Tharoor, “but there are many MPs who see their job as performers in a theatre, since the outcome of voting is anyway preordained.”

In the rumpus over demonetisation, the BJP repeatedly rejected the opposition’s demand that a debate should be held with Mr Modi present and under rules that require a vote. That may have saved Mr Modi embarrassment, but it has pushed back a crowded legislative agenda, including debate over how to apply a unified sales tax whose passage the BJP had hailed as its biggest achievement of the previous parliamentary session.

And how was that important bit of legislation passed? One jaded, neutral MP says it was a combination of two things. “We functioned well last session because Mr Modi got off his high horse, and also because some opposition people were persuaded it was in their interest to get on board.” The persuasion, it seems, was a whiff of scandal such as the tales of corruption that are now surfacing.