:: P.C. Alexander

When politicians mock the voter

By P.C. Alexander

Nov 18 : The political developments in some of the advanced states in the country, especially Karnataka, in the last few weeks have so badly dented the image of the parliamentary system of democracy that people have started having serious doubts about whether this system is suitable at all for us.

Britain’s parliamentary system is based partly on statutory provisions and partly on unwritten laws and conventions. But political morality in that country is so high that the type of bargaining for seats and portfolios that has become common in India rarely affects the primacy of the Prime Minister in the selection of his Cabinet colleagues or the smooth working of the principle of collective responsibility.

But after what we have witnessed in Karnataka, one even wonders whether the prefix "chief", which is part of the title "chief minister" as mentioned in our Constitution, has any significance at all.

Referring to the immense power and influence exercised by the Prime Minister in Britain during war and other crisis situations, Sir William Ivor Jennings had observed that "given a solid party backing and confidence among party leaders, a British Prime Minister wields an authority that a Roman emperor might envy or a modern dictator strives in vain to emulate".

However, with the decline of influence of national parties during the last two decades, the offices of the Indian Prime Minister and chief ministers have become so greatly devalued in our country that it is doubtful whether the great expectations of the framers of the Constitution about the holders of these offices still hold good as guidelines for our democracy.

The treatment which B.S. Yeddyurappa, chief minister of Karnataka, had to endure from his own partymen has exposed the utter helplessness of this functionary against a few influential partymen. The rate at which concessions were being demanded from the chief minister and the way he granted them showed that no price was too high to keep his chair.

The irony in Mr Yeddyurappa’s case was that even the party high command could not salvage the prestige of the office of the chief minister, but instead was keen for a settlement between the chief minister and his rivals by making him yield to almost all the demands of his rivals. The sight of the chief minister breaking down in anguish in front of television cameras will forever remain etched in people’s memory as marking the level to which a chief minister’s office was reduced by his own party.

The way the chief minister expressed disappointment at his own helplessness said it all. In a self-condemnatory mood, he lamented, "For my selfish ends I was forced to ditch those who were my trusted people… Even God will not forgive me for this". The tears which rolled down his cheeks were indeed tears for parliamentary democracy itself in our country. An "amicable settlement" was eventually reached between the chief minister and his rivals, but one has to wait and see how amicable this settlement is and how long it will last. The fear now is that such scenes will be enacted in other states as well by over-ambitious politicians to extract their share of power according to their own measure.

The situation regarding ministry-making in Maharashtra was not as bad as it was in Karnataka. But what surprised those who have known Maharashtra as one of the best administered states in India, based on healthy conventions of parliamentary democracy, was the long time taken by the two coalition parties, the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), over every issue related to the elections and the state Assembly — allotment of constituencies, selection of candidates and later ministers, distribution of portfolios etc. If it took over 18 days after the election results were known to swear in a new Council of ministers, one begins to doubt whether there is really any common ground between the Congress and the NCP and whether this type of coalition arrangement can last long enough and deliver good governance to the people who have been waiting for it.

Ministry-making in Haryana did not encounter the problems which had appeared in Karnataka and Maharashtra. It became relatively easy for chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda to complete the formalities of cobbling up a coalition government as the anti-defection law now permits such fence-jumping by legislators without having to give up their Assembly seat. He could easily find the additional support required for a majority from a few MLAs for whom a ministerial seat is more important than loyalty to a party or ideology.

In our legislatures almost all members seem to think that they are well qualified to be ministers. In Western democracies members elected to Parliament consider it a great privilege to serve for long years as MPs. A ministerial office does not by itself enhance the social prestige or standing of an MP in those countries. In fact, many MPs in advanced democracies think that they can be more useful to the people without the additional leverage of ministerial offices.

The choice of ministers is a relatively easier task for Prime Ministers in Western democracies because of the "shadow Cabinet" system — the main Opposition parties have shadow Cabinets whose members are selected by the party based on experience, standing in the party, aptitude for ministerial work etc. It is time that political parties in India too start thinking of grooming at least a few leaders who could be first choices for the major portfolios in the Cabinet without having to spend several days in discussions.

If we have to take lessons from the experience of ministry-making over the last few weeks, we must seriously consider extending the scope of legislation on defection and splits in political parties and making it compulsory that a defector seeks re-election instead of creating artificial legal limits to convert a defection into a split. This may be considered an extreme remedy against the practice of defection, but if the parliamentary system is to develop on healthy lines in our country, such drastic steps are necessary.

P.C. Alexander is a former governor of Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra