Moving towards a review

THE STRONG NOTE of caution the President, Mr. K. R. Narayanan, sounded the other day - rather unconventionally though - has failed to restrain the Vajpayee Government from embarking upon a review of the Constitution. This of course is hardly surprising, given that the BJP has been hell-bent on undertaking the exercise for its own reasons. In an attempt to soften criticism, the Government has chosen to set the scope of the review in broad terms. The proposed `National Commission' is to examine the document from the standpoint of its responsiveness to the changing needs of an ``efficient, smooth and effective system of governance and socio-economic development of a modern India'' and in the light of the experience of the past 50 years. Care has been taken also to specify that the whole exercise would be within the ``framework of parliamentary democracy'' and that whatever changes the panel might suggest would not interfere with the ``basic structure or features'' of the Constitution. The idea obviously is to allay the apprehensions that the Government was pushing for a switchover to the Presidential form of governance in the name of stability, an idea the BJP has been toying with and articulating for quite some time. An explicit commitment to parliamentary democracy - a concept deemed to be as much a basic feature of the Constitution as for instance sovereignty, federalism, judicial review and secularism are - was apparently necessitated by the imperative of carrying the other coalition partners with it, apart from that of complying with the conditions the former Chief Justice of India and nominee for the chairmanship of the Commission, Mr. M. N. Venkatachaliah, was reported to have set for taking up the assignment.

Although the areas to be reviewed have not been spelt out precisely as yet - it is not known whether the Government would set specific terms of reference or leave it to be determined by the panel itself - quite a few of the propositions being canvassed vigorously by the BJP are unacceptable, going as they do against the grain of parliamentary democracy. The reference is to the concepts of `fixed parliamentary tenure' and `constructive vote of no-confidence', which are trotted out as the panacea for governmental instability of the type witnessed in recent years. In effect, they will amount to grafting an artificial stability into the system through the statute, whereas the real remedy lies in evolving healthy parliamentary conventions and a party system that is truly democratic, ideology-based and accountable to the people. The task of reviewing the Constitution involves much more than what is envisaged by the amending process and differs in its basic character and sweep. Again, whether it is empowerment of women, the question of preventing the abuse of Article 356, revamping of the panchayati raj setup or reordering the Centre- State relations - some of the other areas being mentioned by the pro-reviewers - the problem has very little to do with any perceived deficiency in the Constitutional framework. The stark reality is that the lack of political consensus on implementing some of the salutary recommendations of the Sarkaria Commission and on the safeguards needed to be built into Article 356 (to accord with the Supreme Court's guidelines) account for much of the ills in this domain. This goes for women's empowerment too.

What exactly does the Vajpayee regime want to achieve by setting up the review panel? Apart from the fact that the Commission would be lacking parliamentary sanction, there is no way the Government could get the Commission's recommendations incorporated in the Constitution without the support of the Opposition, given the composition of the Rajya Sabha. In fact, one will not be surprised if a consensus proved elusive even within the ruling coalition on some of the crucial areas, considering the disparate nature of the combine. The labours of the Commission are thus destined to end up as no more than an academic exercise.

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Section  : Opinion
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