A presidential intervention

President K.R. Narayanan's Republic Day-eve address to the nation marks another positive intervention in the public discourse concerning themes and issues that have a direct impact on India's future as a healthy democracy.

AT the first intimations that the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government intended to press ahead with its rather vaguely phrased promise to "review" the working of the Indian Constitution, President K.R. Narayanan chose to place on record his reservations . The occasion was the inauguration of the year-long cycle of observances of the golden jubilee of the Constitution, the day after Republic Day 2000.

On the eve of Republic Day this year, the President served notice that he proposes to keep the review process itself under review. Just days after a batch of "consultation papers" was released by the National Commission to Review the Working of the Const itution, President Narayanan delivered, in the course of his customary address to the nation, an incisive critique of one of its proposals. To the extent that the presidential intervention was limited to just one among a whole host of suggestions put fo rward by the Commission - many of them tentative and half-formed - it speaks of a partial process of scrutiny. But the spirit of his remarks left little room for ambiguity - in the process of remedying perceived lacunae in the political system, the natio n should not put at risk the democratic essence of the Constitution it adopted shortly after attaining freedom.

There is a striking degree of consistency between the concerns articulated by the President in his speeches this year and the last. In his latest Republic Day-eve address to the nation, he drew pointed reference to the polarity between the notions of pol itical stability and responsibility. He said: "The founding fathers had the wisdom and foresight not to overemphasise the importance of stability and uniformity in the political system. As Dr. Ambedkar explained in the Constituent Assembly, they preferre d more responsibility to stability. That is why they consciously rejected the system of restricted franchise and indirect elections embodied in the 1935 Government of India Act. It required a profound faith in the wisdom of the common man and woman in In dia. Today it is necessary to look back at this faith when we hear voices pleading for a system of indirect elections."

These locutions are remarkable in their continuity with the President's speech of January 27 last year. He had then said that the intention of the Constitution was to ensure that the political authority was never spared from the enforcement of basic norm s of accountability. The government, he said, would have to be "on the anvil every day". The Constituent Assembly chose this system because it "preferred more responsibility to stability, which could slip into authoritarian exercises of power."

WITH the benefit of a study of the consultation papers produced by the Constitution review commission, President Narayanan has chosen to reiterate these themes and add a few new motifs. In its paper on electoral law, the commission has tentatively advanc ed a proposal that the system of parliamentary democracy through universal franchise be substituted by a truer form, which is rather perversely ascribed to Mahatma Gandhi. Under this system, the paper suggests, "the only way to conduct a meaningful elect oral exercise" is "to have direct elections only at local levels with the upper tiers filled by representatives indirectly elected by an electoral college consisting of the representatives manning the lower tiers."

This scheme of tutored democracy draws the President's pointed attention: "We may recall that in Pakistan, Field Marshal Ayub Khan had introduced an indirect system of elections and experimented with what he called basic democracy or guided democracy. It would be an irony of history if we invoke today in the name of Mahatma Gandhi, the Father of the Nation, the shades of the political ideas of Field Marshal Ayub Khan, the father of military rule in Pakistan."

For the more ardent of the BJP camp-followers, who pride themselves on the supposedly innate democratic impulse in India, quite in contrast to what is deemed an inherent authoritarian tendency in Pakistan, there could not have been a sharper rebuke. Also implicit in the President's remarks are severe strictures against the obsessive concern for political stability that has underpinned the deliberations of the Constitution review commission.

For instance, among the proposals put forward by the commission is one for the election of the Prime Minister by the Lok Sabha, if necessary through multiple rounds of balloting. A second suggestion is that "a motion of no-confidence" should be admitted only if it has the backing of 20 per cent of the membership of the House, that is, that the motion should be almost halfway won at the point of admission. A further requirement would be that the sponsors of the motion should have an alternative political line-up in mind, which would be put to vote concurrently with the "motion of no-confidence". In other words, at the moment of tabling a motion, the sponsors should have tied up the necessary votes to ensure its passage and install an alternative governm ent in place of the one voted out.

It does not take very great political sagacity to see that these proposals are unduly influenced by the experience of 1999, when the first A.B. Vajpayee Ministry was voted out on the strength of a single vote. This was followed by an abortive effort by t he then Leader of the Opposition to form an alternative government and finally by elections. The experience, even if not the most edifying, was undoubtedly part of a process of learning by doing. The Constitution review commission, in its search for stab ility, seems to deny that the political system as it exists is capable of self-correction. In confining all political agents within a narrow range of options, it seems to serve little else than the interest of elected representatives to hold on to their privileges for a full five-year term. The belief that the people are averse to frequent elections and would rather see various kinds of patchwork coalitions in authority for five years, is one among the many self-serving fictions floated by the political elite. President Narayanan's speech last year struck at the very roots of this pretence. His latest address further advances the critique in a manner fully consistent with his constitutionally mandated role.

PRESIDENT Narayanan has also chosen to use his moral authority to warn against the precipitate rush to embrace new economic doctrines that promise much but deliver little of durable benefit in an increasingly uncertain global environment. He has reminded the nation that the economic paradigm adopted at Independence was the most appropriate for the unique features prevalent then, that whatever gains have been registered in the decade of globalisation have been premised upon the foundations laid then. Thi s is a timely warning that the public sector, which continues to provide the bulk of essential economic services, should not be undermined in the concern to extricate the nation from a fiscal crisis of increasing severity.

The President's counsel that developmental projects should be evolved after a wide-ranging process of consultation has striking resonances with current concerns about the course that the Narmada Valley project has taken. "One precondition for the success of developmental projects in our extensive tribal areas," he says, "is that we should take into confidence the tribals and their representatives, explain the benefits of the projects to them, and consult them in regard to the protection of their livelih ood and their unique cultures." In the event that settled populations have to be displaced by large projects, "resettlement projects should be discussed with them and implemented with sincerity".

Further references made by the President to the inalienable rights of tribal populations to their lands and resources, implicitly challenge the government's recently stated intention to amend Schedule 5 of the Constitution in the interests of promoting m ining activity. For those reasonably familiar with recent conflicts over developmental projects and the threat they pose to the livelihoods of certain sections, the specific points of reference in the President's remarks would be absolutely clear: "We ha ve laws that are enlightened and which prohibit the transfer of tribal lands to non-tribals, private bodies and corporations. The Supreme Court has upheld these provisions... We cannot ignore the social commitments enshrined in our Constitution. In easte rn India, the exploitation of minerals like bauxite and iron ore are causing the destruction of forests and sources of water. While the nation must benefit from the exploitation of these mineral resources, we will have also to take into consideration que stions of environmental protection and the rights of tribals."

Another feature of President Narayanan's speech is a fervent plea to accord the highest priority to the interests of the youth. Also mentioned is the imperative need to complete the process of women's empowerment. Having accorded them the appropriate sta tus in local bodies, he says, the nation now needs to ensure that women gain their due share of representation in state legislatures and Parliament.

K.R. NARAYANAN has been a President unlike any other. When he queued up to cast his vote in the parliamentary general elections of 1998, he sent out a signal that the head of state should be as concerned about his civic duty as any other citizen. The fun ction of political neutrality was to be served through concrete actions and not through symbolic gestures such as renouncing the right to vote. And through the decisions he has made in his limited discretionary domain, and his various interventions in th e public discourse, he has upheld a world-view that is resonant with the values of a more hopeful and optimistic period in the nation's history.

He has, unsurprisingly, often found himself the target of tasteless political polemic. K.S. Sudershan, chief of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), questioned his intervention in the debate on the Constitution last year and insisted that every aspect of basic law - including the adherence to parliamentary democracy - would be fair game for the review commission. This was followed by a rather intemperate attack on the President by the RSS mouthpiece Organiser. This year similarly, BJP vice-pres ident Jana Krishnamurthy has chosen to contest some of the points made in his address to the nation. But in more enlightened circles, President Narayanan's insistence on a core set of political values provides the much needed reassurance in a time of gro wing gloom.