EDITORIAL ANALYSIS : A parliamentary democracy or an executive democracy

Source: The Hindu

• Prelims: Parliament-Structure, organization and functioning, whip etc
• Mains GS Paper II: Parliamentary democracy, functions of whip etc

ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS

• The exclusion of the President from the new Parliament inauguration(formal head of the executive) and the symbolism around the Sengol(a scepter originally used to signify the transfer of power between Chola rulers) generated significant debate.

INSIGHTS ON THE ISSUE

Context

Parliamentary System of Government:

There are two executives:

• The nominal executive is the head of state e.g. President while the real executive is the Prime Minister, who is the head of government.
• The role of president or monarch is primarily ceremonial and the Prime Minister along with the cabinet wields effective power.
• Countries with such a system include Germany, Italy, Japan, United Kingdom, Portugal etc .
• The Constitution of India provides for a parliamentary form of government, both at the Center and in the States.
• Articles 74 and 75 deal with the parliamentary system of government at the Union level and Articles 163 and 164 contain provisions with regard to the States.
• Executive is responsible to the legislature for its policies and acts.

Presidential System of Government:

• There is only one executive.
• In this system, the President is both head of state and government, e.g. USA, South Korea etc.
• The executive is not responsible to the legislature for its policies and acts, and is constitutionally independent of the legislature in respect of its term of office.

Safeguards parliamentary democracies put in place against executive dominance or abuse:

• The executive must command a majority in Parliament: This opens up the space for intra-party dissent, and an important role for ruling party parliamentarians — who are not members of the cabinet — to exercise a check over the executive.
• Ruling party backbenchers can join forces with the Opposition to defeat unpopular Bills (as was the case with various Brexit deals in the U.K. House of Commons between 2017 and 2019).
• The Opposition is granted certain rights in Parliament, and certain limited control over parliamentary proceedings, in order to publicly hold the executive to account.
• The interests of Parliament against the executive are meant to be represented by the Speaker, a neutral and independent authority.
• Certain parliamentary democracies embrace bicameralism: e., a second “Upper House” that acts as a revising chamber, where interests other than those of the brute majority are represented (in our case, that is the Rajya Sabha, acting as a council of states).

Issues:

• The possibility of intra-party dissent within Parliament has been stamped out by virtue of the Tenth Schedule to the Constitution, popularly known as the “anti-defection law”(Constitutional amendment in 1985.
  • The Tenth Schedule penalizes disobedience of the party whip with disqualification from the House altogether.
  • The Tenth Schedule has failed to fulfill the purpose for which it was enacted, i.e., to curb horse-trading and unprincipled floor-crossing.
  • It has strengthened the hand of the party leadership — which, in the case of the ruling party, is effectively the cabinet/executive — against its own parliamentarians.
  • Intra-party dissent is far more difficult in disqualification from Parliament.
• The Indian Constitution did not carve out any specific space for the political Opposition in the House.
  • There is no equivalent of the Prime Minister’s questions.
    • where the Prime Minister has to face direct questioning of their record from the Leader of the Opposition as well as by other politicians.
  • The manner of proceedings in Parliament are under the complete control of the executive, with no real constitutional checks upon how that control is exercised.
  • Speaker, in our system, is not independent.
    • The Speaker is not required to give up membership of their political party, and is not constitutionally obligated to act impartially.
    • This has led to an increasing trend, at both the central and the State levels, of Speakers acting in a blatantly partisan manner.
      • He advances the interests of the executive over the interests of the House.
    • This affects the quality of the deliberations in the lower house (as the Speaker has control over the conduct of the House)
    • It has a knock-on effect on the Upper House:
      • Example: when the ruling party wishes to avoid effective scrutiny in the Rajya Sabha over Bills
      • The Speaker classifies the Bill as a “money bill”, thus depriving the Rajya Sabha of the right to make amendments.
      • Example: In the case of the Aadhaar Act, where Rajya Sabha scrutiny was avoided in this precise manner
      • Rights-protecting amendments could not be passed.
    • Ordinance power: An ordinance is an executive legislation meant to be used only for an emergency, while Parliament is not in session
      • It is used as a parallel process of law-making.
      • The executive uses it to bypass the Upper House altogether, at least for a period of time,

Features:

Reasons for Diminishing democracy:

Way Forward

• Only effective check upon the executive is one where the electorate has thrown up a fractured mandate and the ruling party is forced to govern in a coalition with allies with whom it does not always see eye-to-eye.
  • Coalition partners can exercise something of a check upon the executive in Parliament.
• The quality of parliamentary deliberations has declined: it is simply a mirror of Parliament’s own structural marginalization under the Constitution.
  • We have greater executive power: a situation that resembles presidential systems with strong executives
  • without the checks and balances and veto points that those systems have; in effect, the worst of all worlds.
• India can continue to be called a parliamentary democracy, or whether we have gradually morphed into an executive democracy.
  • To return to parliamentarianism, there’s a need for constitutional changes and reforms.

QUESTION FOR PRACTICE

To what extent, in your view, the Parliament is able to ensure accountability of the executive in India?(UPSC 2021) (200 WORDS, 10 MARKS)