innovative solution for a better india

Dual system of Governance: innovative solution for a better India

India has special pride of place in the world stage. Not only it is the largest democracy in the world, but it is also an exceptional example of a third world country preserving and nurturing the democratic ethos even during the most testing conditions. However does being a successful democracy alone sufficient? Has that political democracy translated into any tangible improvements in the living conditions of the masses about which we can be proud of? The answer is not a whole hearted "Yes". Even after 60 years independence a vast majority of our brethren continue to be poor; we only seek to hide our failure with an utterly pitiable definition of BPL by which if a person earns more than Rs 17 per day, he is considered not poor. Our MMR & IMR are too high to call ourselves socially developed. Our HDI of 0.554 is below the average of 0.64 for countries in the medium human development group. Political justice without economic justice is hollow and our policy makers are trying their best to bridge this gap for many years with only limited success.

Purely from governance and service delivery point of view, if there is one thing which is a common denominator for all our woes, it is corruption. From poor quality of roads to leakages in PDS, from poor quality of primary education to lack of proper sanitation in the villages, from environmental degradation to increases incidence of crime there are a few corrupt officials who are responsible, though may not be fully. This is facilitated by few corrupt supervisory authorities, which is in turn possible or made to be possible because of the corrupt ministers sitting at the helm. Higher bureaucrats are mostly helpless or in some cases themselves corrupt.  It is not a secret that in most government contracts percentage cuts are shared as commission by politicians at all levels and some officials. 

Corruption cannot be tackled unless there is a strong push from the highest level-the political executive (the ministers).  It is not that every corruption by every government official has a direct nexus with the concerned minister. What is emphasised here is that, if a minister is honest and efficient, he or she has the wherewithal to significantly control corruption in his/her department. Today if any talented, socially conscious and honest youth wants to enter politics and dream to become a minister it is simply impossible. First to get an election seat  and then to win over the support of local party cadres, he or she would have to make a lot of compromises and by the time he could become a minister his/her original self would have long been dead. He/she would have ended up investing (?) huge sum of money and his/her natural human response when getting into power would be not only to make good the losses but also to earn sufficiently to face the future elections. Further any significant reform measure is delayed or simply dumped if it affects any of his/her constituencies. Corruption by politicians is like catching a tiger’s tail- once you catch it, you either continue to hold it permanently or opt to die; killing the tiger is practically not possible. It is this original sin of the politicians that spills downwards to the bureaucrats and other officials below.

 How to get an honest and efficient person to head the government who is aided by equally good and at the same time technically qualified council of ministers? This may seem to be like asking for the moon in the present circumstances but it may not be impossible. A reform measure is suggested in this article which can lead to significant progress towards that end if not achieving it. There have been several debates, past and present, regarding the system of governance- Parliamentary or Presidential system and there has been a broad consensus that Parliamentary system is better suited to Indian conditions. This article suggests a unique model of reform which combines the best of both. We should provide for a Presidential form of government at the state level while retaining the Parliamentary form of government at the Union. The founding fathers of our Constitution chose Parliamentary form of government over Presidential system because Parliamentary system was already familiar with the people, the vast majority of whom were illiterate, poor and of rural back ground. Secondly, because of the strict separation of powers, the Presidential system may lead to deadlocks between the executive and the legislature, which a fledgling democracy can ill afford especially after a long and hard fought struggle for independence with all the painful sacrifices including the partition. Thirdly, India being not only vast but also extremely diverse, a single person may not be able to cut across all the barriers- in other words, a person from one particular region may not be acceptable for all the people of India. With India's peculiar case, Parliamentary form of government offered the best bet for representation for all the regions in the Union council of ministers as had been the experience so far. Also Presidential form of government may lead to authoritarianism which has been the case in many instances.

There were lengthy debates and discussions in the constituent assembly regarding the system of Governance- Parliamentary or Presidential, but the discussions didn't extend specifically to the system of Governance at the Central and state level may be because the need didn’t arise at that time.  But now the time has come for some fresh thinking. There is a definite need to improve the governance of the constituent states and if the individual states perform well then the Country as a whole will perform better. All the arguments mentioned above for a Parliamentary system of governance, which influenced our makers of the Constitution,  are still relevant even today at the federal level, But at the state level they may not hold the same degree of relevance. The present literacy level is reasonably high when compared to the time of independence. Also, more than 60 years of democratic experiment has made most people including those from rural areas, politically conscious-that they are voting differently for central and state legislature is a clear indicator in this regard. Secondly, within a state, the level of diversity is not so high and one person can definitely appeal to all sections of the society. Also, India has become politically mature and experienced to handle any dead locks between the legislature and the executive. Hence the time may be ripe to try this experiment-shifting to a dual system of governance- retaining the Parliamentary system at the Centre while changing to a Presidential system at the state level. Though there are certain drawbacks in the Presidential system, the benefits which can come to us, as outlined below, are worth a serious consideration.

In a Presidential system at the state level, the CEO or the Chief Minister will be  have the leeway to rope in experts from different field to head the departments, like in the USA. At present, the people mostly vote for the party not for the candidate, though not in all cases. They decide which party to vote or which party not be voted for, at the macro level and vote for it or against it respectively, irrespective of the candidate except in some rare circumstances. Further the culture of "cash for vote" is rapidly spreading sounding the death knell to our democratic experiment. Thus in the present system there is no real quality check on the candidates to the legislatures, only from whom the council of ministers will have to be chosen. Further, even when there is talent in the elected legislators, political considerations outweigh all other considerations while choosing the council of ministers. Political heavy weights (irrespective of their credentials and criminal antecedents) get the most important portfolios. In the process, only the governance becomes the casualty and this same scenario is getting repeated election after elections.

Secondly, having experts as ministers will also pave the way for a  specialist-Generalist- specialist (SGS) hierarchical model as against the present Generalist-specialist-Generalist (GGS) system in which the minister who is heading a department is a generalist, the secretary, mostly from the IAS is also a generalist and the concerned departmental head  is a specialist. The present model with two generalists at the top is not delivering the results as expected because of the simple reason that each department requires its own specific domain knowledge and expertise which a generalist minister is not possessing. Having a subject expert as a minister will form a winning and more balanced combination: the specialist minister will be able to provide a broad vision and direction to the department, which will be implemented by the concerned department head and the generalist IAS with his own generalist expertise can serve as an effective organizational link between the two by providing a wholesome perspective.

Thirdly, having a Presidential system at the state level will help to decrease electoral corruption by discouraging the use of money by the candidates to buy votes. Presently people accept money and tend to vote accordingly because interalia, there is no direct link between the candidates they are voting and the quality of governance in the state. The candidate may or may not become a minister. However in a Presidential system people's vote will have direct bearing on their future and they will certainly weigh the credentials of the CM candidates more than the money being offered. Face to face debates between the CM candidates will help the people to understand clearly what to expect from each of them. Nobody will buy a defective product for his home just because a bribe is offered to buy it. Can a US Presidential candidate dream of winning the election by bribing the voters? Any such act will only cast him/her in bad light that of lacking in substance and he/she is sure to lose the elections. We should not underestimate our Indian voters that they will not behave similarly; if given the right conditions they too will display their political maturity. Even if they are not presently politically mature, having a such a system ( Presidential ) will certainly act as a catalyst to their political maturity. As said earlier money spent by the politicians during the elections forms the original sin for corruption which then spills downward to the bureaucrats and below. Once that is checked, there will be a significant overall decrease in the incidence of corruption in the society.

Fourthly, the Presidential system will not only improve the quality of the top executives (ministers) but also will improve the quality of the legislators. The elections to the state legislature will be delinked with the election of the political executives. Once the people come to understand that they are voting not for any government change but only to elect their local representative in the legislature who will genuinely protect the interest of their constituency, they will be weigh the credentials of the candidates more than the money being offered. 

Fifthly, in the present system, even if a CM desires to do bring in drastic reforms, he is prevented from doing so by multiple factors- first he\she himself would have corrupted during his/her long political career and secondly if he reigns in too much on the corrupt and inefficient ministers, he may lose their support and lose power. The Presidential system, which guarantees security of tenure to the Chief Minister will certainly motivate him/her to utilize the opportunity to the maximum. A question may arise what if he/she misuses the security of tenure and becomes authoritarian. This author acknowledges that this is one of the real problems of this proposal. But the executive can be held accountable in the following ways. Firstly, elections to the legislature may be held midway through the term of the CM, which will become a sort of referendum on his/her performance. Thus he/she cannot afford to deviate away from people centric policies. It may be appreciated that in Parliamentary system if the ruling party or ruling coalition enjoys complete majority, then they tend to be authoritarian blatantly violating the democratic ethos of our constitution with the legislature ending up simply echoing the stand of the executive. Secondly there are already many safeguards in this regard in our Constitution which has created a strong Union relative to the States; further safeguards may also be made as deem fit, by taking the inputs from constitutional experts.  

Sixthly, we can have a Presidential system in which there is a two term limit to any person to serve as a Chief Minister. This will end the sycophancy surrounding the present Indian Leaders. At present we have many states where a person has been the CM for multiple terms. A picture is carefully created that the party and even the entire state will be doomed without their leadership. The other undesirable feature in the present system is that, after one particular leader, his/her son or daughter is seen as the natural successor. The feudal hangover has still not cleared from our collective consciousness. For all our boasting of being the world's largest democracy, there is an absolute lack of intra-party democracy in India. In many parties, talented people end up spending their entire career without getting any important party positions or ministerial berths to showcase their talent. This lack of intra party democracy and family politics is another crucial factor discouraging socially conscious youth from entering politics. It is not the case that India doesn't have any talent other than the existing leaders and to give examples would be superfluous. But, in the present system, leadership is not being allowed to be groomed in our political parties; leadership and talent are being sacrificed at the altar of the existing leadership. If we have a two term limit for post of Chief Minister, automatically second rung leaders will raise and the country can benefit from some fresh leadership. No leader will be considered indispensable and genuine equity will emerge. The two term limit may not be suitable in the Parliamentary system because, in it the Chief Minister is only the first among the equals; the government is only headed by him/her and strictly it cannot be called as his/her government.

Lastly, a fixed term for CM will provide stability to the state government; Horse trading of MLAs, manipulations by party in power at the Union by misusing enforcement agencies to engineer defections etc will not affect the term of a duly elected CM. Also the office of Governor which is most often misused can be done away with if Presidential form adopted at the State level. These will restore/ re establish State's autonomy and rightful place in our Federal setup as envisioned by our Father of our Construction Dr B.R.Ambedkar. Infact this proposal creates stronger States than now which this author believes would inturn make the Union more stronger as the Union can be only as strong as the constituent parts.

We have seen debates coming up every now and then about the idea of shifting to a Presidential system. As said earlier, the idea suggested above combines the best of both systems of Governance.  Critics may argue that India's managerial crisis has other roots and the idea won’t work. But the fact that even after more than 60 years after independence, we are not progressing at a reasonable pace suggests that there is a systemic malaise. The idea suggested above needs a serious consideration and may be tried atleast on a pilot basis in one state.  I must again reiterate that Parliamentary form of government is one of the basic features of our constitution and it should never be tinkered with at the Union level.