Why India needs an elected Prime Minister
Yashwant Sinha
I am astonished at the speed with which some people, who never tired of singing praises of Pranab Mukherjee earlier, have started denigrating him no sooner than he turned his back on the Ministry of Finance.
I am even more astonished at the touching faith that these people have placed in the prime minister, who has temporarily taken charge of the finance ministry, to turn the economic situation around. It is being projected as if an era has ended and a new era is about to begin.
It is also being made out as if Pranab Mukherjee alone was responsible for the policy paralysis in the government. Nothing could be more erroneous.
What is the relationship between the prime minister and the finance minister? How is the budget prepared? How are other economic policy decisions taken in government? The only person outside the finance ministry that the finance minister takes into confidence about his budgetary proposals is the prime minister.
So, between the finance minister and the prime minister, at least four-five meetings take place to discuss the budget. In these meetings, the PM and FM discuss the general approach to the budget in the context of the prevailing economic situation, the detailed expenditure proposals, the detailed revenue proposals, the fiscal and revenue deficits, and finally, the budget speech.
Every proposal that the FM includes in the budget is approved by the prime minister. Every word of the budget speech is seen and approved by him.
If the prime minister himself is a former finance minister, who has not only presented five budgets but has spent his whole life in the finance ministry, the RBI and the Planning Commission, the depth of his interest in and understanding of the budget can be easily imagined.
The same applies to all major policy pronouncements made by the finance minister separately from the budget during the course of the year.
Was this arrangement followed when Pranab Mukherjee was the finance minister? If not, will the prime minister explain why it was not followed? And, if it was, then is it right for the prime minister to distance himself today from the decisions of Pranab Mukherjee? The malaise which afflicts the UPA government runs deeper than merely the relationship between Manmohan Singh and Pranab Mukherjee.
In May 2004, when Sonia Gandhi appointed Manmohan Singh as the Prime Minister of India, a section of the media went to town praising the new arrangement.
We were told that Sonia Gandhi would look after politics and Manmohan Singh would look after governance; that never before in the history of independent India had this kind of out-of-the-box arrangement been tried before; that given Sonia Gandhi's mastery of politics and Manmohan Singh's mastery of government this arrangement was bound to work wonders for India.
For a while, these predictions seemed to come true when the economy was booming and the country was moving forward. Now, this arrangement has come unstuck. It has failed because it was flawed ab initio. The Constitution of India envisages that the prime minister will not merely be the head of government but also the tallest leader of his party.
The distinction between politics and governance is untenable. If it was not so, then the Cabinet Secretary could easily have been designated as prime minister and he would have ruled in the company of other secretaries. The whole system of accountability of the government to Parliament and its collective responsibility is predicated upon the prime minister being both the leader of the government as well as of the people of India.
Such a prime minister alone can exercise total authority of his office. If the authority is split between the prime minister and the leader of his party - who is also the chairperson of UPA and NAC - clearly we are dealing with a severely handicapped prime minister.
This flaw has been further compounded by the fact that though in the last eight years we have had two general elections, Manmohan Singh has not contested either.
This is why he was described as the 'unelected' prime minister by The Economist in a recent article. If being unelected is such a virtue, then why has the Constitution of India provided for a directly elected Lok Sabha and why have so many of us wasted our time and energy contesting elections?
The answer is simple. Contesting elections, nursing a constituency, keeping in daily touch with the people, roaming from village to village and tackling problems at the grassroots give one an insight and experience which is unparalleled and which no textbook can teach.
I was an IAS officer for over 24 years, worked in the field as well as the secretariat but would like to assert that the rich experience I gained from dealing with the people as an elected representative is something I could not have acquired anywhere else. When did the prime minister last visit a village?
It is true that the Constitution of India does not prescribe that the prime minister should be an elected member of the Lok Sabha. I wish it had. But the established convention of the Constitution is that the prime minister, even if he is a member of the upper House, should seek the first opportunity to get elected to the Lok Sabha.
This convention has been violated with impunity. Instead of protesting against it, the intellectual class has actually applauded it. I have nothing against Manmohan Singh personally. My grievance is against those who constantly overrate him.
The crisis in India today is not merely an economic crisis. It is a crisis of leadership in the UPA. The Prime Minister of India cannot be a bureaucrat. He/she has to be an elected or electable leader of the people. Authority is not bestowed merely by the post one occupies, but is acquired through qualities of leadership.
Why India needs an elected Prime Minister - The Economic Times
