By Kedar Nath Pandey
India is a democracy in that there is an elected parliament and there are elected state legislatures to which the councils of ministers at the Centre and in the states are collectively and individually responsible. The legislature, therefore, has the power to make and unmake governments and without following a cumbersome procedure of impeachment can vote the political executive out of power through a motion of no-confidence. The legislature can also call government to account through various committees; for example, the Public Accounts Committee and the Estimates Committee, through questions, resolutions, adjournment motions and through debates on issues. A minister, unlike in the US, has to be a member of the legislature and no one can continue as a member for more than six months if he is not elected to the legislature.
This is the theory. Unfortunately the practice is quite often at variance with the theory of Westminster democracy. The main instrument whereby the legislature control the executive is the Budget, no item of which can be spent unless a specific grant is voted by the legislature, followed by the Appropriation Act and the Finance Act. Even in the US, where there is a strong executive presidency and ministers cannot be members of either House of Congress, parliament exercises firm control over the executive through the instrument of the Budget. Government is expected to introduce the Budget sufficiently well before the end of the financial year to enable the legislature to critically examine every head of grant.
That is why grants are taken up one by one, debated, subjected to critical review through cut motions and subsequently individually approved by a resolution. I left the service almost 21 years ago and for much of my tenure I found the process of Budget making to be a taxing but exhilarating exercise which tested the wits and skills of legislators and civil servants alike. The members of the legislature asked searching questions and we officers were required to put in a great deal of home work to enable our ministers to reply to the opposition and, equally important, to members of their own party who raised questions on the head of grant concerned.
In such an atmosphere government could not ride rough shod over the opposition because the debates in the house were well reported and people at large asked searching questions if the government’s replies to the opposition were not satisfactory. This was a period of responsible budgeting. In the last twenty years, however, there is a sharp decline in the level of budget debates. I am aware of the fact that a new practice akin to what prevails in America has been adopted of grants being discussed in committee, but this is not the same as a proper debate on the budget, grant by grant, in the full house. Some strange results are seen thereby.
In early 1998 the Atal Behari Vajpayee government was voted out of power and became a caretaker. It is this caretaker government which presented the year’s Budget to parliament, which approved it without a debate on any grant. In other words, here was a Budget presented by a government which was only a caretaker and approved by parliament without so much as a debate on even one head of grant. This practice has been followed year after year in which there may be a token debate on one or two heads of grant, with the rest being guillotined. What sort of a Budget is this in which parliament does not look in detail at the very thing which gives it control over the executive?
Parliament at least meets at regular intervals. The record of state legislatures is abysmal. For example, the MP assembly probably meets for about 50 days in the year. That means that for about 300 days per year our legislators, instead of attending to their legislative duties, spend their time heading public sector enterprises, work as mayors and interfere with the day-to-day administration, as also with the working of the executive over which constitutionally they have no authority except through the legislature. Even though parliament meets frequently, attendance is generally very thin. Either there is no worthwhile debate or the level of debate has sunk to that of a fish market.
What sort of representative democracy is it in which those who claim to represent people do not perform their legitimate parliamentary duties? That is proceedings in the House are often irrelevant and decisions are taken through action in the streets by way of demonstrations, street violence, extra legislative manipulations, sometimes outright bribery, undue pressure and even blackmailing. This is a very sad thing to happen in a democracy and as an Indian. I am deeply worried.
This brings me to my next question, which is devolution. With the 73rd and 74th Amendments of the Constitution we have introduced a third tier of government, the panc-hayats and municipalities, as cons-titutional entities. Because under Article 1 India is a Union of States and cannot, become a Union of panchayats, municipalities and states, there is no seventh schedule which mandates respective legislative competencies of parliament and legislatures. There are only the 11th and 12th schedules which permit states to devolve or delegate certain functions and powers to the local bodies. Theoretically a state can legislate for local bodies to be regularly elected every five years, while at the same time assigning them no functions whatsoever. That is why throughout India powers are delegated to the local bodies but not constitutionally devolved. A certain amount of subordinate legislation is permitted through their respective councils, but otherwise the urban and rural local bodies do not have devolved legislative powers. Even their financial powers are greatly circumscribed since the more lucrative sources of revenue are with the Centre and the states and only marginal locals taxes are under local bodies’ control.
Karnataka tired the boldest experiment of delegation of powers to local bodies, but legislators and ministers who thus found their powers curtailed with the open connivance of the civil servants, soon restored the authority of the state government and diluted the powers of the local bodies.
It is axiomatic that dilution of power also dilutes accountability because one can always pass responsibility on to some one else. This is not a new phenomenon nor is it the only cause of lack of accountability. In the Northeast, for example, Central funds have flowed freely to the states in order to counter the threat of insurgency, but this very threat is also used by the state governments to misuse or misappropriate the money and not to render accounts. This has benefited a large number of politicians and officers but not the common man. So far as the local bodies are concerned, there is no clear demarcation of responsibility which means that large sums of money meant for development are siphoned off by unscrupulous persons and no one is called to account.INAV