Overlapping of the Roles and the Conflict of Interest

There are two major drawbacks in the set-up of Indian democracy. 

 (1)

The leader of the party having the majority confidence vote is allowed to form the Council of Ministers. Those ministers are allowed to use their discretion in running the affairs of respective ministries, by way of portfolio distribution. In this way, the elected representatives, who are supposed to supervise and monitor the executive, themselves become the pseudo-executive. This situation becomes something like the examinee and the examiner, both becoming same or like the situation where the referees in a sports game themselves play the game. So this practice generates the overlapping of two roles, viz. the executive and the monitoring or the supervisory. With the majority in the House, the disapproval of wrong or undesirable decisions becomes nearly impossible in the House of supreme importance. This is harmful to Indian democracy, irrespective of which party or alliance remains in the ruling position.


The right approach to resolve this drawback will be as follows.

  • There should be a provision for providing the representation to all interest groups (the parties under the present set-up) in the Council of Ministers.
  • There should not be portfolio distribution.
  • There should be direct voting for the positions of the President and the Governors. They should be made answerable to the entire House and not to the Council of Ministers. If any conflict occurs between the President (or the Governor) and the Council of Ministers, it should be resolved on the floor of the House. Under present set-up, there is no scope for such arrangement.

Such set-up will eliminate or help minimize the said overlapping of roles and the conflict of interest. 



(2)
There is one more issue. At present, it seems it is assumed that the Head of State, the Head of Government and the Head of Legislature, should be three different positions from each other. This assumption could be creating the issues in the implementation.

In the Indian set-up, the Prime Minister is considered as the Head of Government and the President is considered as the Head of Executive and the Head of State, both at the same time. The word Government also has two different meanings at the same time, viz. the Council of Ministers, as a body for advising to the President, having limited life span of maximum five years and as the Executive Body Political having perpetual existence. All this jumbling generates the issues in the implementation.  

I do not hesitate to ask here as why we need the concept of the Head of State in a republic. In absence of any satisfactory reason, that concept may be dropped. If that position is required anyhow, my suggestion is that the Head of Legislature may be considered as the Head of State. So the two positions can be merged. The President (and the Governors) will be the Head of Executive (like the CEO in the corporate world). Actually, there is no need of having a separate position like the Head of Government also, since the Council of Ministers is supposed to be collectively responsible for its role. Much depends on removing the ambiguities in the meaning of the term 'Government' in the Indian context. 


About the term 'Government' :--

It is often said about forming the new government after the general elections or the assembly elections in a state or after some other circumstances. It is actually about the formation of the new Council of Ministers. Afterwards, the tenure of the new Council of Ministers is known by the name of its Head. In all other cases, the word 'government' is used to denote an organization formed by the constitutional provisions.

A controversy was started a few months ago regarding how the government of the nation should be referred to. It was surely out of the politics between the Centre and various states. Now the discussion on that topic is quite out of the time frame. Yet it is relevant to the subject of this blog-site. A few political leaders from some of the states argued that, since the nation is referred to as 'Union of States', the government of the nation should be referred to as the 'Union Government' and not as the 'Central Government'. At that time, many commentators and scholars had taken the same stance. Many of them are generally seen taking recourse to the provisions in the Constitution. But at that time, nobody seemed bothered to check what is specified in the Constitution. 

 

The truth --

The heading of the Article 77 of the Constitution of India is 'Conduct of business of the Government of India'. So it is beyond doubt that both phrases viz. the 'Union Government' and the 'Central Government' are not correct. Either of these phrases may be used for the sake of convenience during the conversation.But when it comes to official records, the national government should be referred to by using the phrase 'Government of India'. This is my opinion. I had communicated this to a couple of them. But none of them replied on my observation.

The two-sided stance in the politics :--

The same set of political leaders had taken another stance that the executive is headed by the President and not by the Prime Minister. At that time, they seemed having forgotten that the same applies to the state level also. At the state level, the executive is headed by the Governor and not by the Chief Minister. 

 

Anyway, by keeping aside the discussion on the politics, I suggest the following. 

I suggest that the term 'government' should be used to denote the totality of the mechanisms and the means of governing the nation.  It should not be used for identification of or referring to any organization. When it comes to identification of or referring to an organization, I suggest that the particular identity names be specified in the constitution, by excluding the word 'government'. I have taken care of all such aspects while suggesting for doing the Redevelopment of Our Democracy. See Part 1 of my article/essay/discussion paper (by whatever name you wish to call it).


Last updated on 2022.03.31. (First uploaded here on 2022.03.31.)

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