What ails our parliamentary system of Government?

What ails our parliamentary system of Government?

The framework of our Parliamentary government may be criticized on three grounds.

A. Leaving it up to the Conventions:

First, though we have the lengthiest Constitution in the world, its provisions relating to the framework of Parliamentary government are quite sketchy. Much has been left to the conventions prevailing in Britain and other countries having the same form of government. We have not yet been able to establish healthy traditions as a result of which the working of this form of government is ably done. For instance, if we take a flashback of mid 80’s, the Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi did not observe the practice of keeping the President well informed about the affairs of administration despite being constitutionally obliged to do so as per the terms of Article-78, and so the relationship between the two heads, the ‘dignified’ and the ‘efficient’, as termed by Walter Bagehot, became strained short of becoming an open constitutional crisis.

B. Instability of Elected Government (The Coalition Factor)

Second, accountability of the rulers to the ruled is the most essential requirement of a democratic system especially in a Parliamentary system like ours. But the fact of accountability exists by the side of stability of administration. In case no party gets a clear majority in the Lok Sabha and coalition governments come with the wind and go with the whirlwind, the accountability of the government of the day will become merely a farce. Moreover, India a poor nation of teeming millions cannot afford to have recurrent elections keeping in view the humongous expense involved in the elections. 

For this reason, it is suggested by many responsible leaders that we should switch over to the Presidential form of government. It remained a matter of serious academic debate in the 1990s. During the period of 1989-91 we had a very sad experience of the governments under V.P. Singh and Chandra Shekhar who could not play the role of an effective leader on account of their weak position in the Lok Sabha. The parties that did not join the government but preferred to render support from ‘outside’ pulled the legs and so first the BJP took the toll on the V.P. Singh’s government in 1990 and then the Congress (I) did the same for the governments of Chandra Shekhar in 1991.

C. Presidentialisation of Prime Minister

Lastly, over the years the position of one man (Prime Minister) became so powerful that our country came to have the same form of government what Crossman called, ‘Prime Ministerial form of Government with respect to England. The head of the government became so powerful that all other ministers became either his/her camp-followers or ‘palace guards’. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi took many decisions on her own and converted her ministers into non-entities. So was the case of her successor, Rajiv Gandhi. Similar trend cannot be given an oversight even during the regime of PM, Modi.
The Prime Minister’s Secretariat established by Shastri became Prime Minister’s Office and now the PMO has become a centre of extra-constitutional power in its own right. A glaring instance of PMO’s rise may be quoted of Rajiv Gandhi’s government when, his Defence Minister, (K.C. Pant) quoted to have said that he could not have the clearance from the PMO to see Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. Keeping all this in his view, a veteran politician of India says: “The Cabinet form of government was undoubtedly twisted out of shape during the premiership of Indira Gandhi, especially after the Congress split in 1969. During the emergency it was reduced to mockery. Rajiv Gandhi has not only restored the Cabinet Government, he has further undermined it. His cronies dominate the decision-making process from outside the Cabinet; within the Cabinet, ministers are afraid to speak out their mind. Cabinet meetings are not the forum of serious discussion of policies; they are the occasions for competitive adulation of the leader.”
Things however witnessed a change for the better under the stewardship of P.V. Narasimha Rao and his successors to some extent. But the strong position of the Prime Minister has become a fait accompli.

But then, there remains the other side of the story that the Prime Minister should not be taken as a ‘dictator’ in view of the fact that the control of the Parliament is always there. Moreover, the free press has its own part to play in exposing the extra-constitutional and patently as well as latently unconstitutional activities of the working head of the state. Still a pertinent question may be raised as to: 

What has made the position of the Prime Minister so unassailable? An answer to this question should be traced both in the prevailing political conditions in which opposition parties have not been able to play their part in an effective manner as we are witnessing now and also in the wrong tradition of identifying the party in power with the government as happens in a country under a totalitarian form of government. The Prime Minister is not only the head of the government and the working head of the state; he is also the supreme leader of his party having majority in the Parliament. It all makes him the supreme ruler of the country.

By: Pritam Sharma