The Hindu Business Line : The President in a coalition era

India's democracy will be safe only if the President can rise above party and sectarian interests and provide leadership of the type the nation saw from the occupants of the office in the past six decades. The President is the only authority who can advise the polity to stand by the mandate of the founding fathers of the Constitution and remain loyal to the moral law of the unenforceable, says T. C. A. RAMANUJAM.

Very soon there will be a new incumbent in the Rashtrapati Bhavan. Indeed, the country seems set to get its first woman President, with the United Progressive Alliance deciding to field Mrs Pratibha Patil.

The country has been fortunate to have had a succession of illustrious Presidents starting with a patriot of the first order, Rajendra Prasad. The first President had reservations about the Hindu Code Bill, but bowed to the wishes of the Prime Minister and Parliament and upheld Constitutional rectitude.

The eminent philosopher-statesman, S. Radhakrishnan, brought pride to the office and did not allow the weight of the Presidency to overwhelm him. His bond with Jawaharlal Nehru was close enough to withstand his famous speech bemoaning our "credulity and negligence" at the time of the Chinese war. Radhakrishnan became foreign policy advisor and even visited the forward areas in command. Zakir Hussain was an eminent educationist and a Gandhian.

The Presidency had its decline when Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed quietly affixed his signature to the proclamation of Emergency in 1975. Sanjeeva Reddy is said to have trusted more in the Supreme Power than in the Constitution when he swore in Charan Singh as Prime Minister without facing Parliament. Giani Zail Singh promised to wash the floor if Prime Minister Indira Gandhi ordered him to do so. Yet, he had the audacity to suggest to his Vice-President, Mr R. Venkataraman, to take over as Prime Minister in the event of the President dismissing Rajiv Gandhi.

Mr R. Venkataraman, Shankar Dayal Sharma and Mr K. R. Narayanan were all eminent intellectuals steeped in the Gandhi-Nehru tradition. Mr Abdul Kalam, proved that an eminent scientist could also make an eminent President.

The Global Scene

It was said of the American President that he is more or less than a king; he is also more or less than a Prime Minister. The Indian Constitution vests the Executive power of the Union in the President. American jurists have been wavering between two theories about the Presidential powers. Roosevelt was an advocate of the Prerogative Theory under which the President, as the steward of the nation, is under the duty to do anything that the needs of the nation demanded unless such action was forbidden by the constitution and the laws.

On the other hand, many other Presidents chose to abide by the Constitutional Theory laying down that the President can exercise no power which cannot be fairly and reasonably traced to some specific grant of power or justly be implied as proper and necessary to the exercise of the executive function.

In England, the Prerogatives of the Crown have become the privileges of the people, to be exercised by a Cabinet that is really the servant, not of the Crown, but of the representative chamber, which in turn obeys the elector. This is the position in India also. The powers vested in the President are to be exercised by him through a Council of Ministers, which is collectively responsible to Parliament.

The powers of the Prime Minister in England are very large indeed. The electoral system produces one party government. Under the British Cabinet system, there is a daily assessment of responsibility. The Prime Minister is the "Keystone of the Cabinet Arch". He is primus inter pares, the first among equals, in the Cabinet.

A leading Constitutional theorist summed up the efficacy of the British system of governance in graphic words in the early part of the last century: "On the whole, the British Cabinet system offers quick, vigorous, thoughtful and responsible leadership; it is controlled but not stultified, threatened but not executed, questioned but not mistrusted; politically partisan, but not personally malicious; restrained, as much by the spirit of responsible power as by its institutions and sanctions and Janus-like, it looks, at once to the people and to the Lords."

The Coalition Decade

Barring exceptions, India has been fortunate to have a succession of Presidents and Prime Ministers who worked in a spirit of co-operation and not confrontation. The role of the President's post varies depending on the institutional context, the nature of the party leading the government and the political circumstances in which the Prime Minister governs.

When governments are formed from a coalition of various parties, necessitating concessions to the differences in party interests in order to keep a government together, it becomes imperative for the Prime Minister to act primarily not as leader but as conciliator between opposing interests within a government.

Political power gets fragmented and there is the threat of the role of the Prime Minster being reduced to that of a figurehead.

It was in this context probably that Mr Abdul Kalam called for the establishment of a two-party system in India. Dr Shankar Dayal Sharma had sought a debate on the need for a switchover to the Presidential form of government.

The way the parties in the coalition government seek to assert their regional rights brings to mind Gibbon's famous comment that "militant mendicancy" can never be a part of the style of working of coalition governments.

It is in this context that the role of the President assumes absolute importance. Like the British King, our copybook President has "the right to advise, the right to be informed and the right to warn." The President is a unifying national symbol. He has a paramount role when the general elections produce a hung Parliament leaving it to the President to swear-in an assortment of parties with clear majority in national interest.

Mr Venkataraman made a conscious suggestion for the establishment of a National Government. The President has to keep the interest of the nation at heart.

At the moment, India is surrounded by neighbours whose allegiance to democracy is open to question. Sri Lanka is engaged in fratricidal internal war. Pakistan and Burma have military dictatorships. Bangladesh has lost its Parliamentary democracy to Army generals. China is assuming threatening postures over Arunachal Pradesh. In this vast desert of all round dictatorships, India shines forth as an Oasis of Democracy.

It is not always possible to lay down in precise terms the do's and don'ts for constitutional and legislative functionaries. Sir Thomas Taylor of Aberdeen University refers to the Law of the Unenforceable. Beyond the sphere of duty which is legally enforceable, there is a vast range of significant behaviour in which the law does not and ought not to intervene. This feeling of obedience to the unenforceable is the very opposite of the attitude that whatever is technically possible is allowable.

India's democracy will be safe only and only if we have as President a person who can rise above party and sectarian interests and provide leadership of the type we saw from the illustrious occupants of the office in the past six decades.

It is necessary that our next President should be chosen not on grounds of caste or religion but on the basis of sterling character, patriotism and abundant knowledge of the provisions of the Constitution. The President is the only authority who can advise the polity to stand by the mandate of the founding fathers of the Constitution and remain loyal to the moral law of the unenforceable.

(The author is a former Chief Commissioner of Income-Tax.)