The Preamble to the Indian Constitution rules out any form of
government of India other than democratic because it constitutes India
into a sovereign socialist secular democratic republic. Part V of the
Constitution trifurcates the State into three equal constituents, the
Executive, Legislature and Judiciary. The composition of the
Legislature, the Parliament of India, is of members elected by adult
suffrage in the case of the House of the People, the Lok Sabha, and
indirectly by the State Legislatures in the case of the Council of
States or Rajya Sabha.
The whole of Parliament in the Lok Sabha is divided into territorial
constituencies and each elected member becomes the representative of all
the people residing in his constituency and registered in the electoral
roll of that constituency. Each Member of Parliament then acts in the
House on behalf of all his constituents and it is for this reason India
is a representative democracy. The division of powers between the
Executive, Legislature and the Judiciary closely follows the Westminster
model and, therefore, India is considered to be a representative
parliamentary democracy in contrast with the United States of America,
which is a presidential form of democracy. In the Westminster model
government power is exercised by the Prime Minister and the Council of
Ministers who collectively enjoy the confidence of the House and who
advise the President on how the executive powers of the Union will be
exercised. The minute the House loses confidence in government the
Prime Minister and the Council of Ministers must resign and the
government would fall. In the presidential form of democracy the
President is directly elected by the people and neither he nor his
cabinet is responsible to the House of Representatives, the lower house
in the American Congress or Parliament. In fact in the United States a
cabinet member cannot be a member of either House of Congress. There
the balance of power is established by the Legislature through its
functions of legislation and approving the budget, but by itself
Congress cannot either dismiss the cabinet nor remove the President
except through the process of impeachment. In India, which follows the
Westminster model, legislation itself is initiated by government and
because the Council of Ministers is collectively responsible to
Parliament the Executive and the Legislature come together in the matter
of legislative business. Because government enjoys a majority in the
House the Prime Minister can and does influence what goes on in
Parliament, whether it be in the mater of the budget, legislation or
debate. To that extent the Executive embodied by the Prime Minister can
override the checks and balances between the Legislature and Executive,
which are a feature of the American Constitution. It should be
remembered that the infamous Nazi rule was initiated, facilitated and
executed through the entirely democratic process of Hitler as Chancellor
or Prime Minister, persuading Parliament to approve the Enabling Act
and further succeeding in making President Hindenburg sign the Act into
law. This enabled Hitler to rule Germany for a year by decree and one
of his first decrees was to abolish Parliament itself and establish an
absolute dictatorship.
I mention this because in a representative democracy a Nazi Germany
scenario is not beyond the realm of possibility. For example, under
Article 75 the President can appoint a person as Prime Minister who doe
not enjoy the confidence of the House but is a potential Hitler. Under
Article 85 of the Constitution it is for the President to summon each
House of Parliament and the only restriction is that six months shall
not intervene between one session and the previous session. In other
words, after swearing in the Prime Minister the President need not
summon Parliament for a period of five months and twenty-nine days. In
this period the President would have the power to legislate by
ordinance under Article 123, except in the matter of the Appropriation
Act under Article 114 because under Article 113 (2) all estimates
relating to expenditure from the Consolidated Fund of India must first
be assented to by the Lok Sabha and only when a demand for a grant on
any subject is approved by the Lok Sabha can it be included in the
Appropriation Bill. This then is the principal check on the ability of
the President and Prime Minister in conspiracy to convert India into a
dictatorship because if there is no grant and no Appropriation Act no
money can be withdrawn from the Consolidated Fund and, therefore,
government would come to a halt. Another check, of course, is the
Judiciary which in India would strike down any attempt to bypass the
Constitution or convert India from a democracy to a dictatorship. The
Indian Constitution, therefore, does keep India safe from conversion to a
dictatorship, notwithstanding an attempt made by Indira Gandhi in 1975
to superimpose her absolute rule on India.
A representative democracy cannot function if, for example, the Lok
Sabha consists exclusively of 543 members, each independent and not part
of a group or party. To form a government these members would have to
come together in a sufficiently large group to form a majority in the
House so that collectively this group can constitute a government which
will enjoy the confidence of the House. 543 persons can form a group or
groups only if they subscribe to and enjoy a common ideology, a common
programme, a common platform and common views so that they act
cohesively. Such groups are what we call political parties. Section 29 A
of the Representation of People Act 1951 provides for registration by
the Election Commission of associations and bodies as political parties.
Section 29 A (1) reads, “Any association or body of individual
citizens of India calling itself a political party and intending to
avail itself of the provisions of this Part shall make an application
to the Election Commission for its registration as a political party for
the purposes of this Act”. In other words, the Act governing elections
recognises the existence of political parties and provides for their
registration, regulation and superintendence. It is the political
parties which approach the people to vote for their candidates on
account of ideology and programmes of the party as enunciated in the
party’s election manifesto and the people have the freedom to exercise
their choice, not only on account of the suitability of the candidate
proper but also because the candidate represents the party whose
ideology appeals to the electorate.
In Britain there was a fair balance between the Tories (now
Conservative Party) and the Whigs (now the Liberal Democratic Party).
Disraeli epitomised the Tories just as did Gladstone the Whigs. In
fundamentals these parties by and large agreed, though any functioning
and nuances of approach the parties differed. Gradually the Whigs faded
away to be replaced by the Labour Party as socialism began to take roots
in Britain. Now the Conservatives and Labour are the two main parties
in Britain and government alternates between them, but at present the
Conservatives share power with the Liberal Democrats in a coalition. By
and large the parties are fairly and evenly balanced and this results
in a fairly stable democracy in which political parties and their
members have to behave, especially in Parliament, because if they did
not the opposition would pull them up and the people would not vote for
them in the next election. This leads to a healthy democracy. In India
for many years after independence the Congress, whose ideology was
rooted in Gandhian principles, ruled the country both at the Centre and
in the States. The opposition was weak but the prevailing parliamentary
culture was such that it was heard with respect and the opinions
expressed by it in Parliament on any issue were considered very
seriously without the majority party steamrolling them. Men of the
stature of Ram Manohar Lohia and Shyama Prasad Mukherjee carried a
weight in our politics far in excess of the numbers they represented in
Parliament. Because the party in power had an ideological base and a
programme in which the nation came first our democracy was healthy, our
politics relatively honest and our politicians definitely nationalistic
in outlook. The nation came first and the self came later. The
Gandhian principles of austerity governed our politicians, whose life
style, needs and attitudes were simple and, therefore, their greed was
nonexistent. Govind Ballabh Pant, Gopinath Bardaloi, B.C. Roy, B.G.
Kher, C. Rajagopalachari, Jainarayan Vyas, U.N. Dhebar, Ravi Shankar
Shukla, EMS Namboodiripad, Jyoti Basu, Gulzarilal Nanda, Morarji Desai,
not to mention Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and Maulana
Azad are all remembered almost with reverence by our people, generation
after generation, because of their sacrifices, their simple living and
their deep commitment to the people and the nation of India. These
were examples of the political class who represented an ideal which has
not been paralleled anywhere in the world.
In politics and in the political class the most important thing is
ideology. The Chambers Twenty-first Century Dictionary defines ideology
in the following words, “The body of ideas and principles which form a
basis for a social, economic or political system: the opinions,
principles and way of thinking, characteristic of a particular person,
group of people or nation”. We cannot have a political system in which
there are neither ideas nor principles and if that happens we cannot
have a social or economic system. A political party bereft of ideology
is no party. Unfortunately as politics stands today there is no party
which has an identifiable ideology and I state this in the context of
the Communist Party of India or Communist Party of India (Marxist) also.
Ultimately the programmes of a party have to be based on an ideology
and the Preamble to the Constitution itself states that this ideology
must take into account the fact that India is and will be a republic,
its form of government will be democratic, it will be secular in nature
and it will be socialist in that it will promote both equality and
equity. Here one is not talking about dogmatic socialism but rather of a
republic in which socialism means that there will be social, economic
and political justice for all and there will be equality of status and
of opportunity for all. The socialist ideal here would ensure that the
right to equality before law enshrined in Article 14, prohibition of
discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of
birth enshrined in Article 15 and the equality of opportunity in matters
of public employment enshrined in Article 16 will be the guiding stars
of every government, regardless of party affiliations. Socialism in the
Indian context also means that the directive to the state enshrined in
Article 38 to establish a social order for the promotion of the welfare
of the people in which justice, social, economic and political, shall
inform all the institutions of the national life will determine every
policy of government. The question is whether any of these ideals forms
part of the ideology of any political party in India and whether in
fact any party has an ideology.
Ideology cannot be a matter of the moment. Ideology is the core of
any political party and that core can evolve, but it cannot change like a
weathervane responding to erratic air flows. Certainly ideology cannot
be twisted and turned as a means of expediency. In this behalf I would
like to mention Margaret Thatcher, the Conservative Prime Minister of
Britain. She made an ideological statement when she came to power that
she would dismantle the socialist state in Britain and in the process
would destroy the instrumentalities of socialism. She then proceeded
single-mindedly to fulfill her ideological objectives and whereas she
faced enormous opposition in the manner in which she dealt with the
Arthur Scargil led coal miners strike, the issue of poll tax, the
reduction of milk in the school mid-day meal schemes, etc., she remained
unperturbed by the personal unpopularity which visited her on some of
her more controversial decisions. Regardless of momentary praise or
opprobrium Margaret Thatcher went ahead with her programme to an extent
where the political philosophy of the country changed. When ultimately
Labour came to power under Tony Blair after a Conservative interregnum
under John Major, that party had to repudiate many of its shibboleths
and instead adopt many of the programmes of Margaret Thatcher. That is
called an ideological approach to ruling the country. No Indian
political party today has any ideology.
Up to1967 the Congress ruled India and by and large the old political
class we inherited from the freedom movement continued to uphold Indian
traditions. One could recognise the political class and identify
oneself with it because it represented the best there was in this
country. In 1967 everything changed. Starting from Haryana and rapidly
coming to Madhya Pradesh we had the Ayaram--Gayaram phenomenon in which
Members of the Legislature were bribed to defect from the ruling party
and form a separate group which caused the ruling party to be ousted and
new united front governments to be formed for the first time. In the
history of independent India for the first time power was thus
purchased. Suddenly our legislators found that they could command a
price and if this price was paid the mandate of the electorate could be
undone and new political combinations could be formed to constitute the
government. Of course the new government itself would be unstable,
based as it was on bribery and, therefore, having illegitimately won
power it had to continue bribing in order to retain power. That was the
end of any form of principled government in India and it brought into
existence a new political class whose origin was corruption. In order
to buy power one needed money and unless the State was subverted money
could not be had. Therefore, the instrumentalities of the State had to
be overawed and made totally pliant so that they would not stand in the
way of illegal money making and to facilitate it the Civil Services had
to be suborned. A systematic attack was launched on the Civil Services,
they were made to surrender to threat and coercion, the honest officers
who stood their ground were identified and isolated and the corrupt and
the pliant brought to positions of power. The reason for the existence
of the All India Services, independence, fearlessness in giving advice
and impartiality, integrity and fairness in implementing the orders of
government, was attacked at the very root and virtually destroyed. Thus
a nexus was built up between the Services and the political class and
the binding force was corruption.
Let me give one or two examples of how the political class has
changed. Prior to 1967, in fact prior to 1975 when the Emergency
destroyed whatever was left of principled government in India, one could
differ from the ministers but one never questioned their motive or
their integrity. Takhatmal Jain, who had been Chief Minister of Madhya
Bharat, was the Minister for Industries and for Development in the new
State of Madhya Pradesh. P.D. Chatterjee was Secretary of the
Industries Department. Takhatmal Jain told Chatterjee that a case of
one of his friends was pending in the department and that he wanted it
to be examined urgently. Thinking that this would please the minister
Chatterjee prepared a favourable note and recommended approval of the
applicant’s proposal. Takhatmalji sent for him and said that he had
expected the Secretary to Government to examine the case and not a
courtier of the minister. He then sent the file back for proper
examination on merit and in doing so he wrote on the file, “Please
examine the case on merit. If sanction is justified please give the
reasons for this. If, however, the case does not merit approval please
advise accordingly. If I still want to favour the applicant I shall do
it at my discretion, but your job as Secretary to Government is to
render the correct advice”. By way of sharp contrast when I was head of
the Delhi Development Authority my then minister Sikander Bakht, wanted
me to sanction the building of a five star hotel at 15, Aurangazeb
Road, New Delhi by Bhai Mohan Singh, the owner of Ranbaxy Laboratories.
When I pointed out that our Regulations did not permit this Sikander
Bakht did his best to pressurise me into violating my own regulations,
including a written directive to change them. I had to tell him that he
was free to change the Delhi Development Act through appropriate
legislation but so long as the Act was in force government could not
direct me either to change the Regulations or to violate them.
Thereafter I remained the target of his anger, but I refused to give in
and the hotel was not built. The cumulative result of this and other
fights with his successor, Ram Kinker, resulted in my ouster from Delhi
Development Authority and I spent a whole year without a posting. Most
officers are not prepared to undergo such a fate and that is why the
Services are today in shambles. The moral of the story remains that a
principled minister would not accept the flattery of his Secretary and
an unprincipled minister would not accept a stand taken by his officer
based on law and rules. This is the change which has come about in our
political class over the years.
No democracy can function on the basis of the bureaucracy alone,
however efficient, honest and forward looking it might be. The power to
legislate vests in the Legislature and the power to take policy
decisions vests in the Council of Ministers which consists of elected
members of the Legislature. At different levels of government, including
urban and rural local government, the same position prevails and
ultimately it is the elected representatives who, in a democracy, take
policy decisions based on their party ideology, their declared programme
and the mandate of the people. It is a Civil Servant’s job to advise,
to point out precedents and the law and to bring to the notice of the
decision makers the various courses of action available and the
consequences of each. Once a decision is taken the Civil Servant must
faithfully implement the decision, though in doing so he must be totally
fair, evenhanded and impartial. In other words, the policy decision
will be political but its implementation will be totally impartial.
These respective roles become completely blurred when all decision
making becomes a function of expediency and it is dictated by either the
bribe which is received or the fear that is instilled by the
possibility of losing power if a particular pressure group is not
pleased. Such a political class no longer cares for the duties mandated
to it by the Constitution because to it service of the nation, the
welfare of the people, the development of the country are not issues of
importance. What is important is how to remain in power, may be even
for one extra day, so that everything that the system has to offer to
oneself is squeezed out of it. The objective of the leaders of the past
was to govern well, whereas the objective of the leaders of the present
is not to govern at all and yet to enjoy power. The dictionary meaning
of ‘govern’ is, “to control and direct the affairs of a country, state
or organisation” Power, on the other hand, is defined as “control and
influence exercised over others”. If power is used to govern it is
desirable. If, however, power is used for self-aggrandisement, for
pelf, for nepotism or for creating the means whereby power can be
re-purchased, it is highly undesirable. In the case of the Indian
political class as it exists today it is the latter use of power which
governs all its actions. Such a political class cannot run a true
democracy.
What the Indian political class has forgotten is that the reason for
its existence is not self-perpetuation. If that were the case India
could have opted for a hereditary absolute monarchy. If that were the
case India could have opted for a Kuo-min-tang type of autocracy which
afflicted China under Chiang Kai-shek before the Communist take over in
1949, or we could have opted for a Pakistan style theocracy in which the
most powerful force is the Army. Instead we voluntarily opted for a
secular republic which today has a second largest Muslim population in
the world after Indonesia. We opted for a democracy in which the armed
forces are clearly subordinated to civil authority. We opted for good
government. Unfortunately we have gifted ourselves a government which
is virtually non-existent in terms of the will to govern, manned by
extremely corrupt and self-seeking politicians and their Civil Service
supporters. As a result a country with enormous potential for growth is
hamstrung by government itself. India does not deserve such a
political class.
Is the situation irremediable? The fact that Indira Gandhi was voted
out of power in 1977 means that the electorate will not accept a
dictatorship. The fact that the Left Front was voted out of power means
that the electorate will not accept single party rule. The fact that
in election after election those who are known to be corrupt often lose
the election means that the people of India want honest leaders. The
fact that where there is good government, as is the case of Gujarat
under Narendra Modi, Bihar under Nitish Kumar, Orissa under Navin
Patnaik means people vote the party back to power. Where there is bad
government, as occurred in Tamil Nadu under M. Karunanidhi and in
Uttarakhand, the ruling party was ousted. The electorate wants a
political class which will serve the people rather than themselves.
That is the message of the common man loud and clear. Now the ball is
in the court of the political parties.
It is time that political parties took stock of the situation and
restored the trust of the people in ideology and programmes. That has
to start by eschewing every form of caste and religion based politics.
Today every political party calculates its chances of success according
to the mathematics of caste and religion. That is why Rahul Gandhi, who
is clean shaven in Delhi, has a two-day stubble when visiting the house
of a scheduled caste person and sports a beard when he visits a
constituency with a sizable Muslim population. Does he think that
everyone in India is born an idiot and that such symbols will get him
votes? Therefore, starting with the Congress it will have to break away
from its dependence on the Nehru-Gandhi family, it will have to think in
terms of developing a grass-root leadership in which Sonia Gandhi,
Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Vadra do not count on account of their
marriage or their birth and there is genuine democracy and development
of leadership based on support at local levels. Then Congress must also
have a specific ideological base from which programmes should develop
and these should be presented to the people for their judgment. The
Left Front, where leadership questions are not based on heredity, must
also now decide whether it wants to become only a clone of China, a
country ruled by the Communist Party but somewhat to the right of United
States in the matter of a capitalist economy, or it wants to function
under Indian realities in which a State Government cannot dare to
acquire 38,000 acres of fertile agricultural land as the Left Front
tried to do in Nandigram for allotment to an industrialist. The BJP
itself must decide whether it wants to develop in a secular environment
in which RSS is no longer its principal mentor. I say this because the
dilemma before the BJP is that unless it widens its base it cannot be
accepted in the South and in the East and if it widens its base the RSS
may break away. Even if BJP were to work according to Hindutva
philosophy, which could further widen the religious divide and polarise
minority votes, there is no guarantee that there would be a counter
Hindu polarisation and more Hindu votes for the BJP because the Hindu
vote is already divided on the lines of caste. BJP fails to win not
because the Muslims vote against it. It fails to win because a large
number of Hindus vote against it. It is for the party to decide whether
it can garner more Hindu votes through an aggressive pursuit of a
Hindutva programme or whether a more genuinely secular approach will get
it more Hindu votes. One phenomenon in Gujarat where anti Modi
journalists, social scientists and politicians have spared no effort to
attack Modi, is that in that State without in any way appearing to reach
out to the Muslims Modi has been able to get a percentage of Muslim
votes and in the last local government elections he had given party
tickets to Muslims and succeeded in having a large number of Muslims
elected. This means that at least a section of Muslims in Gujarat feels
that good government, even though appearing to be communal in outlook,
is more beneficial to them than a government which promises secularism
but delivers nothing. Introspection by the political parties will have
to include coalescing of parties on ideological lines so that the
blackmailing pressure of small groups representing either individual
interests or regional interests do not take over and overwhelm any
future coalition. In other words, the parties must try and absorb
smaller groups so that eventually we have a centrist party, a right of
centre party and a left of centre party in which the limits of extremes
on both sides become circumscribed. It is this which will lead to more
meaningful coalitions and, therefore, better government. Ultimately the
political class has to draw itself back from the brink of corruption
and go back to what the Constitution envisaged for them -- principled
politics whose objective is to promote the welfare of the people and
wealth of the nation.
Lastly, as things stand today by 2014 we may reach a stage where no
party, including Congress and BJP, may get more than a hundred seats.
This would lead to very fragmented coalitions and there would be
virtually no government. Nothing can be worse than a fragmented polity
for that opens the door to a future Hitler. For the sake of India the
political class must reform itself and parties who can win the
confidence of the electorate and in return deliver good government are
strengthened.
