Although New Delhi's monsoon session has just begun, it's already on the brink of being washed out as soon as it starts. This was the end of day one, as so often before, adjournment, sloganeering and a walkout, with both Houses unable to conduct itself to any great extent before the presiding officers had had enough and were forced to call it a day. The second day hasn't been very pleasant either. The theatrics of MPs storming the well of the House cannot explain why this particular logjam is worth paying attention to, but the number of crises unresolved, stacked on top of one another, and the significance that can be attributed to this pile-up, to the state of India's institutions, as they go into the second half of 2026.

Begin with Government's legislative wish list. This session the Centre seeks two big-ticket items: the Supreme Court (Number of Judges) Amendment Bill which seeks to increase the bench strength of the Supreme Court; and the Prevention of Insults to National Honour (Amendment) Bill, which aims to put Vande Mataram on the same footing as the national anthem by making its disruption or insult an offence. The latter bill, for which the Cabinet had given its approval in May, has been on the anvil for a year since it was officially approved to commemorate a century and a half from the time it was composed by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay in 1875. Home Minister Amit Shah is taking it through the Rajya Sabha and the government is making it look like it will finally put an end to an old cultural debate, that Prime Minister Modi had revived in December after accusing Jawaharlal Nehru of diluting the song's legacy for appeasement. But Congress has resisted tooth and nail that interpretation of history, with its own freedom fighters jailed for singing the same song, and the actual bill has come to occupy a fraction of the space of the debate over the history.

It would normally be the story of the day. Rather it is being smothered by three other fires blazing at the same time. The first is Sonam Wangchuk's hunger strike, 23rd day which he has conducted at Jantar Mantar in solidarity with the youth-led Cockroach Janta Party's sit-in demanding resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. The Ladakhi engineer-activist's condition has been reported to be deteriorating over the past week, prompting calls from Opposition leaders to end the fast, while leveraging upon the activist's fast as political leverage against the Government. Since then, his wife, Gitanjali Angmo, has taken him to the Delhi High Court that claims authorities tried to prevent him from even heading to the protest site as a result of medical intervention, thereby adding yet another dimension to the civil-society stand-off.

That's the reason for that strike: NEET-UG paper leak, which caused a re-sitting of an exam which was already sitting by about 25 lakh medical aspirants. In India's exam economy the industry around competitive entrance tests is worth several billion dollars a year an announcement of a cancelled entrance exam in India can cause pain on multiple fronts, economic, psychological and social, in the family's finances, private coaching revenues and college admission cycles. The government has cited arrest and a CBI probe as evidence of its action while the Opposition, including P. Chidambaram, Congress MPs from across states, have argued that it has done nothing to address accountability issues as seen through several leaks and is yet to take any steps to reform the National Testing Agency or dissolve it.

The third fire is perhaps the most uncomfortable for the ruling establishment since it involves the ground the BJP generally considers politically impenetrable the Ram Janmabhoomi Temple in Ayodhya. From early June, the initial reports of missing chadhava donations have spiralled into a full blown SIT investigation, with estimates of the shortfall of the chadhavas ranging wildly from around Rs 7.5 crore by the trust's initial count to estimates in later media reports of more than Rs 200 crore. More than half of the people involved in the temple's cash-handling have been brought into question, with the CCTV footage from the counting rooms said to be lost and one alleged accused even being caught on camera withdrawing donations within days of being recruited by a family member. It is a credibility issue on two fronts for a trust already facing questioning for its land purchase prices close to the temple complex, and Opposition parties including the Samajwadi Party have not been tempted to wait until the last minute to call for a court-monitored audit.

Add the weather on top of all these, and it becomes a session when the government's well-trained hands are kept busy in designing the legislative agenda, which also keeps colliding with events that it didn't plan to happen and cannot completely control. The Vande Mataram Bill has a great possibility of getting approval, because of the arithmetic in both Houses. But the more important question for this monsoon session is whether a symbolic bill is able to pass the Rajya Sabha. Whether a government that desires to be remembered for civilisational legislation can be responsible for exam-hall failures, temple-donation leakage and a 23-day fast outside its own front door in the same fortnight! Legislation of symbolism is very easy and inexpensive. Once the trust in the institution is lost, it's hard to come by.