A Parliamentary Democracy or an Executive Democracy

Context:

Last week, a new Parliament building was inaugurated with both fanfare and controversy. 

Controversy Involved:

• Parliament Inauguration: Exclusion of the President of India from inauguration of Parliament, as the President acts as the formal head of the executive.
• “Sengol issue”: As per opposition, there is no documented evidence of the Sengol being handed by the British to Nehru on the eve of Independence. 

Issues with India’s Parliamentary Functioning:

• Lack of Debate: Bills are passed with minimal or no deliberation. 
• Frequent Adjournments: Parliament sits for fewer and fewer days in a year, and parliamentary sessions are often adjourned. 
• Ordinances as a way of Law Making: Presidential ordinances have become a parallel if not dominant form of law-making.
• Lesser Number of Parliamentary Sittings: Overtime the number of days Parliament sits in a year has been decreasing.

Constitutional Design:

• Constitutional Design has been such in Indian Polity which facilitates and enables the marginalization of Parliament, and the concentration of power within a dominant executive.

Safeguards of Parliamentary Democracies Vs Executive Dominance: 

• First, in order to enact its agenda, 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. 
  • Occasionally, ruling party backbenchers can even 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). 
• Second, the Opposition itself is granted certain rights in Parliament, and certain limited control over parliamentary proceedings, in order to publicly hold the executive to account. 
• Third, the interests of Parliament against the executive are meant to be represented by the Speaker, a neutral and independent authority. 
• Fourth, certain parliamentary democracies embrace bicameralism: i.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).

 News Source: The Hindu