Bimal Jalan, the author, was formerly the governor of the Reserve
Bank of India
and the Chairman of the Economic
Advisory Council to the Prime Minister. In the
first 41 years independent India
had six prime ministers. But between 1989 and 2006 there were seven prime
ministers, all without backing of a majority party indicating that multi-party
coalitions as a regular form of government in which instability is inbuilt have
come to stay. That such a government could last for even three years shows the
resilience of Indian democracy and Parliamentary form of government. Besides
instability there are also other latent threats to democracy which Bimal
Jalan’s book addresses.
Coalitions result from the proliferation of political parties and
also work as incentive for such proliferations. With fractured result of an
election, even small parties wield enormous bargaining power. Leaders form
parties and manage to secure few seats into the House and then ‘negotiate’ for
Cabinet posts. The first casualty of such coalition cabinet is the principle of
collective
responsibility. The primary concern of each group within the
coalition is to protect its own interest. With each cabinet minister becoming
an independent master of his own ministry the collective responsibility becomes
limited to maintaining majority in the House for survival. If survival is
possible in another coalition even this responsibility is shirked off. The
procedure and performance of the
Parliament also gets affected and even rules are
suspended to pass the Budget and the Finance Bill without the Standing
Committee considering it.
An important related issue is that the erosion of collective
responsibility is accompanied by a process of politicisation of the permanent
civil services. With unlimited powers of transfers and appointment in the hands
of ministers, civil servants are entirely at their mercy. The issue of
corruption, which exists in almost all walks of life and which has now become
noticeably prevalent in the political area is another serious issue. It starts
at the election process in which the sole objective is to win, any method is
considered acceptable. There is also the question of criminalisation in politics.
A survey conducted during elections of Lok Sabha in 2004 showed that out of
3182 candidates surveyed as many as 518 belonging to various parties had
criminal antecedents. Out of these 115 were elected and thus had an opportunity
to become ministers. Thus corruption becomes a part of India’s
coalition politics.
Establishing that these are the ills of today’s Indian politics
Bimal Jalan doesn’t stop, he also suggests several reforms. If coalitions are
unavoidable, he says, then all parties that form a coalition must be considered
to be a single parliamentary formation. Small parties with, say, less than ten
percent seats in the Parliament that later decide to leave the coalition must be
disqualified with all their members losing seats in Parliament as well. They
can be however free to once again contest election and come back to the
Parliament. Individual ministers must be accountable to the Parliament for the
performance of their ministries. Persons who have been ‘charge sheeted’ for
corruption, fraud and other criminal offences should not be permitted to become
ministers. Measures for the de-politicisation of the civil services must be
taken.
Rules of procedure of Parliament should not be allowed to be
suspended and no major legislation should be passed by voice vote. The
presiding officer must be given powers to suspend or even expel members who
frequently disrupt the proceeding. State funding of election should be accepted
as the financial implications are quite manageable. The book also covers
Centre-State relationship, economic policy, relationship between executive and
judiciary.