The Big Story: Being presidential

At 12.15 pm on Tuesday, the 14th president of India will take the oath of office in the Central Hall of Parliament. It promises to be a lavish ceremony, mixing military splendour with a certain imperial oomph: a 21-gun salute at Parliament, a tour of the Rashtrapati Bhavan and an inter-services guard of honour waiting for the new president in the forecourt of the presidential palace. In the midst of all this ceremonial pomp, one question refuses to go away: why does a modern parliamentary democracy, where the real executive power lies with the prime minister, still need a president?

The authors of the Constitution had clarified that they were not giving the president “any real power”. BR Ambedkar described the president as the “symbol of the nation”, someone who “represents the nation but does not rule the nation”. Nehru called the president “a great figurehead”, who neither rules nor governs, but holds an office vested with “authority and dignity”, rather like the monarch in England, whose parliamentary system we inherited. Over time, these abstractions seem to have lost their resonance with the wider public and some have called for abolishing the office of the president. After all, one commentator argues, there is no popular emotional investment of the kind seen with the royals in England; the president does not figure in “any thinking citizen’s Idea of India” and does little of any moment.

It is true that the president executive and discretionary powers are narrow, but in times of political crisis, they can be immensely significant. When general elections throw up a fractured verdict, as they did through the 1990s, it is for the president to take a call on who will form government. And it took the president’s signature on a government order to plunge the country into an Emergency in 1975. They may give or withhold assent to key bills and orders, passing them back to the Parliament for further discussion. They may ask questions of government, making it account for its decisions. At a time when the ruling dispensation holds a brute majority in the Lok Sabha and is gaining ground in the Rajya Sabha, when governments have grown increasingly prone to ruling by ordinances and pushing through questionable legislation, when the country teeters dangerously on the brink of majoritarian excess, the office of the president could be an important check in our democratic system.

Question is, can Ramnath Kovind fill that role? Even before he won the presidential elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s candidate was accused of being a “rubber stamp president”, a party man who was close to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and likely to do the government’s bidding. The fact that he was Dalit was dismissed as jarring tokenism by the BJP, meant to undermine real movements of Dalit assertion. But whatever the reasons for his nomination, Kovind could rise above them. He starts with a clean slate, one on which he could script a distinguished presidential tenure.

The Big Scroll

Sruthisagar Yamunam reports on the three men close to the prime minister’s office who will hold key posts in Kovind’s Rashtrapati Bhavan.

Ajaz Ashraf argues that picking Kovind as the symbol of subaltern assertion dissipates the energies of the extant Dalit movement, just a year after the Una protests broke out.

Punditry

  1. In the Indian Express, Devashish Mitra on how the Narendra Modi government needs to improve its record on economic reforms, going beyond the goods and services tax and the bankruptcy law.
  2. In the Hindu, a succint explainer on the Gorkhaland movement concludes that the agitation is about opting out of West Bengal’s domination and moving towards India’s democratic framework.
  3. In the Economic Times, Pranab Dhal Samanta argues that with a BJP president in place, Delhi has a new Lutyens, and the Opposition will have to find new ground on which to challenge the ruling party.

Giggles

Don’t Miss...

Shreya Roy Chowdhury reports on a new study that shows how poorly Indian states are spending on schools:

  “All states except Tamil Nadu appear to spend less than what they ought to. Jharkhand spends Rs 8,504 per child per year where Rs 19,396 is required, while Odisha spends just 44.09% of the required Rs 24,701. Delhi, the study says, spends just 62.83% (Rs 9,691) of the required Rs 15,425 even though the state government increased allocation to education massively in 2015.”