Rationalizing the Parliamentary System

Rationalizing the Parliamentary System

As another Republic Day approaches the chatterati will pick up, yet one more time, a debate on India’s constitution, its strengths and failings. Yet nothing will come out of such a debate because of the closed minds that comprise India’s intellectual orthodoxy. There are three principal players in this debate – the Congress, the Left, and the BJP. Each one of them subscribe to an alien intellectual framework (or none at all), and consequently would keep quibbling over minor issues that have more to do with immediate vote-bank politics, rather than taking a comprehensive national view and assess the constitution accordingly.

The Congress, by heritage, draws its intellectual inspiration from the British Westminster model of parliamentary democracy, which it has customized it to suit the Indian ground reality. The Left draws its inspiration from the erstwhile Soviet model which might have become redundant in its birthplace, but the Indian Left has quite remarkably rationalized it to influence public policy by capturing its determinants, viz. the academia, the media, the popular culture, and the overall intellectual framework. The oddball is the third player, viz. the BJP. This animal pretends to represent Hindu nationalism (whatever that means), but till date has not articulated a vision that could sway the country’s intelligentsia, to offer an alternative to the Congress and the Left. Perhaps the BJP leaders realize this lacuna, thus very feebly advocate some kind of presidential form of government. Expecting BJP to offer a cogent intellectual resistance to the Congress and the Left is like racing a donkey against mighty stallions in a horse race. There is no contest.

The debate on constitutional reforms and specifically the system of governance has become significant because of two immediate symptoms, viz. (a) the general voter apathy highlighted by low voter turnouts, and (b) growing Naxalism in the countryside. The two factors should send alarm bells to every thinking citizen to sit up and take note, as they represent the frustration of the masses who seem to have either become indifferent or are prepared to overthrow democracy.

Any debate on constitutional reforms will have to acknowledge the fact that it is not the constitutions that fail; it is the people operating on that constitution that fail. The failure of governance in India is a characteristic of the collective failure of its citizenry in general, and the instruments of state in particular, viz. political class, the civil services, the judiciary, the media, the professional classes – teachers, lawyers, etc. Having said that, it is equally important to review the constitution, to upgrade it to suit the collective character of the citizenry.

Sixty years of governance (or lack thereof) has highlighted a serious flaw in the way Parliamentary democracy works in India, which will be the focus of this essay, viz. the overlap of the legislative and executive branches of government. In theory, the executive head of the country is the President, and that of States is the Governor. But then the President and the Governors have to work on the explicit “advise” of the Council of Ministers headed by the Prime Minister or the Chief Ministers. In practice, the PM and the CMs are the de facto head of the executive branches of the government. The source of the problem is that the PM and the CMs are members of the legislatures voted in by a particular geographical constituency. The rest of the country does not play any role in decision-making of who would their chief political executive be. This situation is further exacerbated by cynical exploitation of another loophole, viz. the Rajya Sabha route. As we have seen since 2004, the Prime Minister is not even elected by any constituency. The politicians (of all parties) have created a system of backdoor entry via the respective upper houses – the Rajya Sabha and the legislative councils in the states. Since the PM and the CMs appoint their council of ministers, and in most cases are also their party heads who distribute tickets to contest elections, we see a complete cycle of political authoritarianism that the politicians have contrived to suit their own partisan and/or personal ends. This is one serious constitutional flaw that needs to be immediately addressed.

Even though the original idea of switching to a Presidential style of government was mooted by Vasant Sathe, a Congressman, the BJP latched on to this bandwagon due to sheer absence of an alternate system of public policy formulation. BJP lacks he intellectual vigor to formulate anything new, let alone articulate it coherently to challenge the status quo. The colonial heritage of the Congress Party naturally forces it to stick to the compromised Westminster model, which also has become politically expedient for it. Therefore the Congress will advance arguments against the change in model as a matter of tactics, which is quite understandable.

But the American style presidential form of government is also not suited for India, precisely because of the same reason that disqualifies Westminster model of government. Those who advocate the Presidential model have overlooked the history of the American model which was gestated during the American Revolution and was based on a strong military commander (starting with George Washington) defeating the Redcoats in a straight combat. A cursory look at the American constitutional history reveal that the American Presidency was conceived as a republican replacement for the European style monarchies, which also combines two governmental functions — head of the state and the head of the political executive.  Since then Military service had been a quintessential feature of the American presidential tradition until very recently when Bill Clinton broke that tradition. The point is that both the American presidential system and the British Westminster models are products of their respective lands, which gestated and developed in their respective national contexts. For India, the American style presidential form of government would be as disastrous as has been the Westminster model. Americans and British were smart enough to organically develop a model that suited them. They did not run to India (or China) to learn how to govern themselves. They did on their own. And so should we.

It would be ideal to properly elect another constituent assembly to frame a new constitution, but such an exercise would fail because there is no indigenous intellectual framework to provide the talent to take up this task. The present-day intellectual orthodoxy will throw up another farce in the name of constitution making, and we may actually be worse off than present. There is also the Keshavananda Bharati vs. Union of India factor, and it is not clear whether the Supreme Court would actually bar the formation of a new constituent assembly.

Given the extraordinary circumstances the best we can hope for is for a few stitches here and there that can stop the bleeding. The current predicament of overlap of legislative and executive functions will need to be remediated without changing the basic structure. A systemic change needs to be mooted that can reduce the extant political authoritarianism and remove the remote control factor. Political executive at all levels need to be directly elected by the people, but at the same time retaining the current offices of the President and the Governors as heads of states (but not the heads of political executives). Proposed herewith is a model that could be implemented within the basic structure of the current constitutional framework.

Since the actions of the PM and the CMs have a direct bearing on all constituents, they should be voted into power directly by all the constituents using a formula that incorporates the ground realities of India politics — fragmented polity and multiplicity of parties. This requirement can be easily integrated into the current model of electing Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha members from a certain geographical area. In each constituency a particular ticket should comprise of two persons, not one – first the person who serves as the local legislative representative (MP or MLA), and second the person who serves as the head of the political executive (PM or CM). The co-ticket should be assigned the same election symbol (naturally sponsored by a party or a pre-election coalition) and when voters vote they select a tuple of two persons – one to serve as their legislative representative for a particular constituency, and the other to head the political executive who will be common for all constituencies contesting on the same election symbol. This model can be explained further by applying to the last year’s Lok Sabha general elections – where the Congress would have had to put Manmohan Singh on the ballot as the PM candidate, along with local Lok Sabha candidates in all of the 543 seats. Additionally, for the unambiguous election of a head of the political executive, and given the nature of multiple parties and a fractured polity, each constituency could represent ten (10) electoral votes in an electoral college for the election of head of the political executive . If any tuple wins more than 50% of the vote then the candidate for the head of the political executive would get all the ten electoral votes from that constituency. If the tuple fails to reach the 50% mark then the electoral votes would be proportionally divided. The winning point for head of the political executive would be half of all the electoral votes (0.5 * 10 * 543 = 2,715 electoral votes). Thus any PM candidate who would reach 2715 electoral vote count would win the PMship. If no candidate reaches the 2,715 figure, then a runoff election could be conducted between the top two candidates voted by the Lok Sabha MPs at their first sitting through a secret ballot.

Once the PM gets elected by a popular vote he or she would appoint the Council of Ministers to head various ministries and departments, but not from the MPs who have been elected to the Lok Sabha or Rajya Sabha. The PM and his ministers would sit in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha as non-voting members, to take part in debates and be accountable to the parliament the same way as it is now. The legislative governance could be strengthened by making budgeting as a purely legislative function. The Finance minister should not have any role in budget making (though he could send in proposals) because budgeting is a legislative function.  Similarly, the PM and his ministers would not be able to propose any laws as they would come from the legislative committees and the proper legislative process.

The aforementioned model addresses a serious lacuna that has crept in the current model of governance. It takes note of the ground realities and rationalizes the current parliamentary model by separating the legislative from the executive. This model would force the voters to directly elect a political executive while retaining all the checks and balances in the current constitution. Once there is a directly elected PM, he or she would be better able to work on the delivering able governance, because the PM (or CMs) would not be dependent on the MPs for his/her own survival.

January 23, 2010