Constitutional roots of India's crisis
| (Courtesy: Organizer Weekly) |
Constitutional roots of India's crisis
Dr. Gautam Sen
There
are many reasons why India is facing an extraordinary crisis of
governance today despite being on the threshold of the greatest material
advance in its history. One critical underlying reason for the huge
contemporary crisis is fragile national social solidarity. It is not
totally absent, especially on an inter-personal level, but failing to
manifest itself in the political life of the country. Such solidarity
amounts to a willingness to share one’s good fortune and fate with
others and postpone gratification for the greater good of society and
unborn generations. Instead, a desire to achieve selfish, immediate
personal goals, without regard for their wider societal consequences,
has become dismayingly established in India.
This callous predicament is widespread
among the governing classes of India, with criminality the norm at all
levels of political and administrative authority, from local structures
to the highest level of the federal polity. In fact, India’s ruling
elites have no shame and do not apologize for their dishonesty and
corruption when detected. Unfortunately, underlying this phenomenon is
India’s great diversity and the essentially localized interaction among
its people. They institute a propensity towards self-regard that limits
the evolution of bonds of mutual concern beyond caste, community and
religious affiliation. Societies with the greater social solidarity tend
to be small in size and relatively homogeneous. Scandinavian countries
are examples, but their experience is also replicated elsewhere, within
closely-knit communities that harbor parochial ties.
Societal diversity and heterogeneity
cannot be wished away, but institutions that govern a country profoundly
influence how people actually behave. Regrettably, India has inherited
political and constitutional structures that exacerbate the negative
spin-offs of its innate variety and tendency towards fissiparousness. A
Presidential system of government and executive authority is better able
to govern diverse countries with greater wisdom and factor in the
long-term consequences of policy options. Presidential executive
authority may not unfailingly guarantee superior governance, as
experience around the world demonstrates, but it is far less likely to
routinely amplify divisions and fault lines in society. By contrast, the
history of post-independence India confirms that is exactly what
parliamentary government, which controls the executive authority of a
Prime Minister, invariably achieves.
Voting for an electoral representative
in a restricted geographical location will inevitably impute greater
weight to parochial interests and trivial issues like the compatible
ethnic, linguistic or religious identity, etc. of the candidate. As a
result, narrow concerns automatically become prominent in elected
chambers because voters chose the member to articulate them. Such an
outcome matters less in a regional assembly or panchayat setting because
they are intended to deal with questions that are essentially local.
But in a national legislature, it is acutely unhealthy for policy making
if narrow parochial concerns displace truly overarching and long-term
issues. Unfortunately, India’s fractious electoral system, thoughtlessly
adopted by its leaders on independence, exaggerates and amplifies
divisions rather than providing a basis for wiser national perspectives.
And the unduly competitive voting behavior reinforced by such a
situation across the country predisposes the political system towards
even greater short-term thinking.
By contrast, a Presidential system of
government would immediately prevent the instinctive preference for a
supreme elected representative primarily on the basis of partisan
considerations. It would be problematic for any candidate to organize a
national political coalition on the basis of caste, religion, etc.,
alone and expect to win a poll involving all adult citizens. No single
community has such dominant overall numbers in the country and the
support of several communities would be necessary for any candidate to
emerge victorious. However, they are unlikely to share sufficient
criterion of sectarian motivation in common to ignore all other
qualifications when considering a candidate as their supreme national
executive authority.
A Presidential form of government would
not be a complete political solution to India’s manifold divisions and
numerous problems, but it would, in one single stroke, prevent the
decisive automatic impact of the nation’s multiple fault lines on
electing the supreme national executive. Indian voters would be forced
to think nationally and reflect with greater sobriety since instant
parochial gratification of whims and prejudices could no longer be
easily pursued. They would be compelled to become a nation. The
candidate for President would surely need to identify grievances
affecting particular communities, but issues that promise everyone
opportunity to achieve some common goals would thrive in national
political discourse. Egregiously unfair caste quota politics and the
blatant communalization of politics to appeal to minority voters would
encounter resistance across the country from others empowered by a
collective national vote to articulate it.
On a practical note, it is clear that
constitutional changes required to create a Presidential form of
government in India are insuperably constrained by past choices.
Instead, the election of the prime minister directly by the entire
electorate at the time of national parliamentary elections might be
feasible. It would still require constitutional change, but that would
be less radical in perception though dramatic in potential impact. The
elected President should be allowed to pick a Cabinet from among
parliamentarians of both national legislatures, regional assemblies and
civil society though parliament might be allowed to scrutinize latter
nominees before their assumption of high office. Members of both houses
of parliament should be empowered in a new constitutional compact,
perhaps a variant of the role of the US Congress and Senate, to create
the necessary constraints on Presidential prerogatives that elected
representatives should possess.
The process of selecting candidates who
can offer themselves for election as Prime Minister would need to be
designed to prevent a chaos of numbers in an open-ended system. It would
be prudent and practical to only allow groups in the national
legislature with 5 per cent of the votes or an appropriate percentage to
nominate candidates. In addition, political parties in control of
regional assemblies, which did not have a presence in the national
parliament, could select a potential aspirant though such a situation is
unlikely in practice. In addition, there can be provision for
candidates from carefully delimited underprivileged groups if one was
not already selected through other stipulated means.
Constitutional change, electing a Prime
Minister with presidential prerogatives can become the occasion for
enunciating major economic principles alongside it. The two guiding
doctrines informing such economic aspirations can be reinforcement of
the twin social bonds of family life and community solidarity. The
family unit is facing transformative pressures owing to the emergence of
a highly mobile labour market that compresses society to the minimum
viable for biological reproduction, which is the nuclear family. It also
puts the nuclear family itself under huge strains, determinedly
curtailing its size and undermining its ability to function by placing
extraordinary demands on it. The outcome at the end of the spectrum
seems to be the single parent family, supported by the state. The
experience of its socio-economic and devastating psychosocial
consequences in the so-called advanced economies should provoke alarm.
Economic incentives to facilitate joint
families, despite the sacrifices required by them in terms of privacy
and individual liberty, should be considered. Individual dwellings of
sufficient size or proximity to each other that encourage joint families
should be promoted. Despite unavoidable administrative complexities
property tax exemptions and tax subsidies for offspring, if parents live
with them, might be an additional innovation. The labour market entails
geographical mobility and cannot be avoided in modern economies, but it
is not a divine creation and the trade-off between the material
advancement it apparently promotes and personal and social well-being
should not be ignored. In addition, all forms of social ownership of
assets, especially of quoted companies, should be aggressively
facilitated.
All taxes on insurance, which happen to
constitute voluntary mutual help, should be eliminated, including taxes
on dividends from equity. Trade unions and other specified charitable
social organizations should be exempt tax on equity assets they own.
Similar provisions should be extended to education and health care
organisations that assure equitable treatment to all. Pension funds, in
the form of annuity investments, providing an income that ceases on
death are also appropriate beneficiaries of similar treatment.
Particular attention must be paid to ensure that the underprivileged are
organized to benefit from the social ownership of assets that enjoy tax
privileges. The benefits of such provisions need systematic reflection
and the model of predominantly charitable ownership like Tata Inc is
surely worthy of examination for emulation. In time, India’s economy
will become socialized without the abolition of market mechanisms to
allocate resources and price them.
An economy organized on this basis could
be the underpinning of a tolerant Hindu social order that eschews
unbridled private greed, although governed by regulated markets. The
question of India’s Hindu identity underlies the paradox of a divided
people, at odds with themselves, which was posed in lamentation at the
outset. The governing elites of independent India have made it their
goal to keep Indians divided in order to use their differences to rule
them and plunder. This is how the colonial British and their
iconoclastic imperial predecessors had sought to control India. India’s
contemporary rulers they have, in addition, taken to inciting novel
communal fractures and tensions at every conceivable juncture. In recent
years, outrageous benefits have been offered to undeserving minorities,
purely on a sectarian basis, as well as guarantees of immunity from
culpability for any violence they instigate.
The Hindu foundation for the cultural
unity among an overwhelming majority of Indians has been spitefully
neglected by Jawaharlal Nehru and his successors, a tradition contrived
by Mahatma Gandhi, who capriciously misinterpreted Hindu ideals. Its
comprehensive extirpation is now sought by an alien dynasty, implanting
quasi monarchical rule in India. This massive constitutional subversion
of India is proceeding apparently without serious challenge from India’s
political class or its bankrupt intelligentsia. Hindus need to resist
this diabolical threat and revive the faith that unites them across the
length and breadth of India. This faith inheres in India’s historic
memories of struggle and survival against genocidal predators and
ageless consciousness of sacred rivers, mountains and an awesome
landscape teeming with numberless places of worship. They should stir
unfathomable emotions in Hindus who need to congregate for a final roll
call in their honor and defence.
(The writer is president, World Association of Hindu Academics)
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