In a joint press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin earlier this month, the Indian Prime Minster, Dr Manmohan Singh, had a lucid commentary on India’s democracy.
“India is a well-functioning democracy with full respect of fundamental human freedoms and human rights of the population and that in our system of government there is a very important place for civil society actors to influence government policies, to criticise government policies, and to agitate in a peaceful manner for the resolution of any problems that they may choose to emphasize,” he said (PTI, 11 April 2013).
Dr Singh should know a thing or two about the Indian democracy. He is the only person outside of the Gandhi family to have served two full terms as Prime Minister, assuming that this term is not torpedoed before next year’s general election. He has described questions about a third term as “hypothetical,” which could mean not ruling it out entirely.
AP
Dr Singh is a veteran of Indian affairs, a luminary who will leave a distinctive mark in the country’s contemporary history. But he has never won a general election where he has been voted in directly by the people. Yet, as Prime Minster, he represents the aspiration of 1.2 billion people in the world’s most populous democracy.
Dr Singh is a member of the Rajya Sabha from Assam. The Rajya Sabha, or Council of States, is the upper house of the Indian parliament. Its members are elected indirectly, by elected members of the state legislature. The upper house was created partly because framers of the Indian constitution believed that a Parliament consisting only of a directly elected single chamber, such as the Lok Sabha, would be inadequate to meet the diversity and challenges of a free India.
Dr Singh has been a Rajya Sabha member from Assam since the early nineties. He rents a flat in Guwahati (Nadan Nagar, Sarumataria, Dispur, Guwahati, Assam) for an address–very conveniently from the former Assam Chief Minister, Hiteshwar Saika.
The framers of the Indian constitution may have thought long and hard, debated well into the night about a political system that would best represent the complexity and diversity of India. They may never have imagined that it could simply require a Chief Minister to rent out his spare flat to the Prime Minster to make it all work.
Dr Singh remains the undisputed leader of a “well-functioning democracy” despite never having won a direct general election. He is Prime Minister on the basis of a rented flat in Guwhati.
What, then, is in a constitution anyway?
Dr Singh isn’t the only member of the current India Cabinet to have never won a direct general election.
“In our country elections are not contested between personalities. Our national polls are not a beauty contest. It is fought between political parties. Based on its manifesto, ideology and performance, a party contests an election,” Jairam Ramesh, Indian Union Minister for Rural Development said in Vadodara earlier this month (NDTV, 14 April 2013).
“Our system is not like the one in America—the presidential system wherein two people contest polls and based on how one looks, talks or cracks a joke. Elections should not be trivialised, it is a serious matter,” he added.
Minister Ramesh should know a thing a two about elections. He has never contested a direct popular election. He has never had to take his “manifesto, ideology or performance” directly to the people and asked for their vote. He is a member of the Rajya Shaba from Andhra Pradesh, and has been one since 2004.
Like Dr Singh, Minister Ramesh is a veteran of Indian affairs. He plays a key part in the functioning of the Government and the Congress party. Previously, as Minister of Environment and Forests he advocated for stronger implementation of environmental and forest protection acts, blocked the clearance of several large infrastructure projects, and had become the biggest bane of Indian industry.
But in a subsequent cabinet reshuffle, Minister Ramesh was promoted to full Cabinet Minister, transferred from the ministry of environment and given charge of the important ministry of rural development.
There are 34 members currently in the Indian cabinet. Eleven of them, including the Prime Minister, are from the Rajya Sabha. Most of them have never contested or won a direct popular election. A third of the minsters in the current Indian cabinet have not had to explain their “manifesto, ideology and performance” to the public voter in direct general election. Their constituency, instead, are the elected members of their own party in the state legislature who have to vote along party lines.
When the framers of the Indian constitution were designing the Rajya Sabha as way of representing India’s complexity and diversity, did they ever imagine that a third of the cabinet would never have won a direct popular election?
Direct elections, the ability of every individual to have a say in the formation of their government through the ballot, is the most fundamental underpinning of a democracy.
When Dr Manmohan Singh stood up in Berlin and said India is a “well-functioning democracy,” the whole world applauded without disagreement. Nobody asked him how his government can be considered to be representative of India when the country’s voters have had no direct say in selecting a third of his cabinet.
When Minister Ramesh roared into the tribal area of Odisha, put a stop to mining in those hills and claimed that “tribal people are not showpieces,” nobody told the minister he had no right to represent tribal people because he had never won a popular election in his life. Actually, he’s never even bothered to contest one.
Whatever the esoteric debate on whether the Indian constitution allows the full variety of aspirations to be represented through its political system, India continues to function politically within its complex context.
Akhilesh Yadav, the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, summed it up rather neatly.
“FICCI (Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry) and CII (Confederation of Indian Industries) are pitching for their candidates. If they have their candidates, then farmers and poor will also say that they also want their PM,” he said (Economic Times, 22 April).
When Dr. Manmohan Singh said India is a “functioning democracy,” the world applauded without any disagreement.
Yadav was mostly mocking the fact that Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi, the two likely Prime Ministerial candidates for the next general election, had been invited to speak by the business associations FICCI and CII respectively.
But in many ways, Yadav’s statement also captures the functional confidence in the Indian political system to represent the diversity of interests and values.
Nepal has been mired in a polarizing debate on whether the federal states should be carved on ethnic lines. This issue has stalled progress and come to symbolically represent a way of addressing centuries of accumulated injustice.
As the curious case of the Indian democracy illustrates, there is no perfect constitution, only functional ones.
God could probably create a perfect constitution. Unfortunately, we did not elect any God to our Constituent Assembly.
Let’s stop playing God and get on with the show.
The author is a consultant on energy and environment
bishal_thapa@hotmail.com
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