Parliament deadlock: Why Rudy's alternate suggestion won't work

A paralysed Parliament where virtually no meaningful transaction takes place. A besieged government that is so afraid of its own shadow in the wake of a succession of corruption scandals that it has virtually ceased to make policy. A political executive that has made a mockery of accountability to the public. And an opposition that has perfected the art of barricading the government at every stage. It’s palpably clear that virtually every limb of the political system - such as they exist in India - is fractured for now – others would say it is beyond repair. The decline in governance levels has given rise to widespread popular frustration, raising fundamental questions on whether the political system that we have inherited serves the needs of the country and its people. That debate has gone on for a long while now, and has centred around the desirability (or otherwise) of providing for an executive office that isn’t hemmed in by politics, and ensuring that lawmakers stick to their ambit and make law. Of course, every time such a debate is initiated it immediately runs into a wall of opposition on the grounds that it would amount to altering the basic structure of the Constitution, which provides for a parliamentary form of government. [caption id=“attachment_778265” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  AFP[/caption] Now, an attempt is being made to envision an alternative arrangement that looks to break the gridlock that characterises our polity without fundamentally altering the basic structure of the Constitution. It comes in the form of a private member’s bill moved in the Rajya Sabha by BJP leader Rajiv Pratap Rudy. Rudy’s bill, as reported in the Indian Express, envisions a Prime Minister – and Chief Ministers – who are directly elected, and a delinking of the executive from the elected legislators, both at the Centre and in the States. That would effectively limit elected legislators’ functions solely to making law – and then holding others accountable for its implementation (rather than themselves directly implementing the law). Under Rudy’s plan, the directly elected “chief executive” (either the Prime Minister at the Centre or the Chief Ministers in the States) would be free to appoint his or her own Ministry, not necessarily from among the elected representatives. Rudy’s proposal – which would effectively “presidentialise” the Indian political system, perhaps modelled on the French parliamentary system, may prove a non-starter, given the entrenched vested interests in the system and the inertia for change even among the bigger parties who feel frustrated by the gridlock. Rudy reasons that barring lawmakers from taking on ministerial or other positions would filter out the corrupt who gravitate to politics solely to feed off the system. In addition, he reckons, this form of governance would ensure that the “national agenda and priorities and foreign and other policies do not become subservient to regional demands” merely to ensure the survival of the government. In other words, working under such a system would have allowed a “chief executive” of the UPA 2 government – it may have had to be someone other than Manmohan Singh, who only made it Parliament through the back door, via the Rajya Sabha – to not be weighed down by the blackmail of the DMK and Trinamool Congress. But then freedom from slavery is such a revolutionary idea that not everyone wants to break free. The model that Rudy suggests is similar to the one that Congress MP Shashi Tharoor commended for India two years ago more suited for the Indian polity. “Pluralist democracy,” wrote Tharoor, “is India’s greatest strength, but its current manner of operation is the source of our major weaknesses.” India’s many challenges, he noted, require political arrangements that permit decisive action, “whereas ours increasingly promote drift and indecision. We must have a system of government whose leaders can focus on governance rather than on staying in power. The parliamentary system has not merely outlived any good it could do; it was from the start unsuited to Indian conditions and is primarily responsible for many of our principal political ills.” In 1948, when the Constituent Assembly was debating the contours of the political system best suited for India, BR Ambedkar argued that “a democratic executive must satisfy two conditions: It must be a stable executive; and it must be a responsible executive.” And although it had proved impossible to devise a system that could ensure both in equal measure, the Draft Constitution had commended the British parliamentary system on the ground that it provided for more “responsibility” even at the cost of “less stability” because the checks-and-balances system it provided for was better suited for Indian conditions. The irony is that today the prevailing political system provides neither stability nor responsibility. As Tharoor noted, “dissension by a coalition partner or supporting party can hamstring the government. Under the current system, India’s democracy is condemned to be run by the lowest common denominator — hardly a recipe for decisive action.” No system is perfect in itself, and it’s entirely possible that there are ways for politicians to game the system that Rudy and Tharoor commend as a way to end the gridlock that characterizes India’s polity today and build the robust democratic systems that our the framers of the Constitution would likely have put in themselves – if they had visualised how badly it would be perverted. But for that same reason, Rudy’s trial balloon may not fly far. As Tharoor himself acknowledged, “To suggest this (change) is political sacrilege in New Delhi. Barely any of the many politicians I have discussed this with are even willing to contemplate a change.” The main reason for this, he reasons, is that they know how to work the present system and do not wish to alter their ways.