System Overhaul?

When I was re-reading one of Shashi Tharoor's finest works(India: From Midnight to the Millennium and Beyond), one paragraph within the final chapter caught my fancy. While Tharoor was wrapping up his insightful account of India's political journey from the late 1940s to the early 2000s in a chapter titled 'A Future Without Shock', he quite strongly advocates his preference for a Presidential system of government, over our current Westminster Abbey styled Parliamentary regime. He laments the stability that a Presidential Chief Executive enjoys over a representative democracy Prime Minister, and how he/she can behave more like a member of the Executive than the Legislature. He believes that a country like India, with its monumental economic and social challenges, requires leaders who can focus on governance rather than on staying in power. To borrow a quote from him, 'Indian politicians are more skilled in politics than policymaking'.

Quite so. And Tharoor backs his brave stance with a number of good points. He starts off by laying down the facts that India, quite frankly, does not possess all the criterion required for a parliamentary system to successfully function. "It(The Parliamentary System) requires the existence of clearly-defined political parties, each with a coherent set of policies and preferences that distinguish it from the next, whereas in India a party is merely a label of convenience which a politician adopts and discards as frequently as a Bollywood film star changes costume.

Indian political parties have a reputation for being flippant in terms of ideology. Coalition partners swap places on a fairly whimsical basis, going to whichever major party gives them more benefits. For the General Elections of 2009, both the UPA and the NDA, have seen major allies leave (BSP and BJP respectively), either to switch sides or to go solo. Of course, the biggest evidence of a 'Crazy Coalition' is the newly formed Third Front that represents the Communists in Kerala, the Dalits in Uttar Pradesh, the Social Democrats in Karnataka and the Populists in Tamil Nadu. Hardly a Band of Brothers.

To put the argument on ground level, Tharoor argues that if a person wants LK Advani or Dr. Manmohan Singh to be the national leader, they must vote for someone else in order to indirectly accomplish that result. Hardly a McCain vs Obama duel, which is the political version of Muhammad Ali taking on Joe Frazier. The American political system is quite different from the Indian one. 2 parties. Red versus Blue. The Elephant versus the Donkey. Republicans versus Democrats. Tharoor uses the US example as one which would be greatly beneficial if applied in India. Rather than voting for your local MP, who you have probably never even heard of, vote for the man/woman you want who should lead the nation. The elected PM can choose his cabinet, and Tharoor predicts that experts in each field will be appointed to head Ministries. More effective, probably; more efficient, certainly.

Tharoor claims that suggesting this is political sacrilege. But he finds support with the 13th and 16th Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, who espouses the idea of a revolutionary change of government to a Presidential Regime. Understanding the practical challenges facing such a monumental shift, Vajpayee argues that "even in the mightiest fort one has to repair the parapet from time to time, one has to clean the moat and check the banisters. The same is true about our Constitution."

Proponents of the change argue that the current mess is caused by parliamentary system and not vice versa. Tharoor ends his slightly rant-like opinion by stating that the disrepute into which the political process has fallen in India can be directly traced to the workings of the parliamentary system and argues for change.

I disagree. Call me an romantic old-school Nehruvian, but I cant bear to think of power shifting away from the Sansad Bhavan to the Rashtrapati Bhavan. We got our freedom after a long struggle against foreign autocratic rule, and our nation's guardians in the Constituent Assembly have tried their best to prevent domestic autocratic rule. The point of parliamentary democracy is to choose your own areas representatives. These representatives, based on ideologies are members of political parties. And the party with the most number of seats in the national assembly chooses a representative to lead the government, and effectively, the country. The layers of choosing by the people is what keeps authoritarianism at bay. One my favorite anecdotes of Nehru was in the 1930s, during his ascent, he anonymously penned an article in the Modern Review warning Indians that 'he must be checked' as 'we want no Caesars'.

Nehru was a convinced democrat. And his 17 years at the helm steered India towards political stability. The towering figure protected the Free Indian Union at its toughest time, its infancy. And for that reason, I for one, am glad that the Mahatma pressed for him to lead, and not Vallabhai Patel, who should have been made PM by right. If India sacrificed economic growth at the time, it was at the expense of building a nation, constructing an Indian Identity. The Jan Gan Man would hardly be called as a song sung from all corners of the nation with heartfelt loyalty. Cricket and films were yet to unite us. And there was no Mahatama.

It is such times, that make a dictator. A non-existant opposition and support reeking of sycophancy, usually feeds an ego, into making one man think he can rule the country with no restrictions, and it will be in the benefit of everyone. Yet, Nehru respected the power of the people. He always maintained he was an elected representative of the people and he had no moral right to the throne (Ironically his daughter was the antithesis at the time of the 1975-77 Emergency, and his younger grandson Sanjay was exactly what he wanted to protect the nation against).

Forgive me for making this article to be an ode about Nehru, but I strongly feel that this is one of his greatest legacies. Belief that people can rule themselves through a representative democracy, without fear of failed democratic experiments in numerous other Asian countries is what he wanted to leave India with. The root problem with a presidential system of government is that it feeds dictatorship ambitions, it guarantees stability but it takes away instant accountability that a Prime Minister has to give. It gives an individual the ability to run the Executive without fear of the Legislature, but bears the risk of making a situation very similar to what was there at the Emergency. Some saw the Emergency as a time when trains ran on time, others (myself included) see it as a black mark on our political history.

We are not China. We cannot do something like the Three Gorges Dam. The stalled Narmada river project is more up our alley. We cannot sacrifice freedom for the price of economic development, something the Asian Tigers have done. We cannot give away our legacy, a system which prevents any one man from getting to much power. We have not performed exceptionally, but given our challenges, we have reacted satisfactorily.

This is India. And over here, we do things our way.