Comment

India has had a president since 1950, when the Constitution was adopted on January 26 of that year. That is when India became a republic and was free of the dominion status that it had won in 1947. The Constitution of India gives the nation the parliamentary form of democracy. That is, the state has a head of state, which is largely a ceremonial post and the business of running the government lies with a Council of Ministers who are members of Parliament. It is Parliament which makes the laws. It is Parliament which is supreme. The most powerful house of Parliament, the lower house, is elected directly by the people. This form of democracy was picked up from the British system, where the monarch is the figurehead.

In the United States, they have a presidential form of government. Contrary to common assumption, the president is not directly elected by the people but by an electoral college. That is, the most powerful man in the world is elected by other politicians. He is the head of the executive wing of government. The houses of their parliament, known as Congress, are inferior to the president.

Look at it this way. The two houses of the Indian Parliament pass a bill and send it to the President for approval. He sends it back. The two houses re-pass the bill exactly the same way, with no changes. The President of India has to give his assent.

The two houses of the American Congress pass a bill and send it to the US President for his assent. He sends it back. They send it back. He vetoes it. Curtains for the bill, kaput, finis and so on, he wins.

End of pol science lesson.

The past few weeks we have been sorely and earnestly concerned about the candidature of the next President of our sovereign nation. In our world where the agenda is set by a growing middle class and honed and directed by 24 hour news channels, we the people have no option but to be bothered.

Why can’t we choose the president directly? Why can’t this president be elected again? Why doesn’t anyone care what we think? Why are politicians so venal and horrible? Why are the rest of us so wonderful and perfect and all the other concerns of a people for whom the most pressing choice in life may well be IIT or IIM and mall or multiplex or possibly, both. Usually, we’re smart enough to pick the both option.

So guess what, smarties? It doesn’t matter. It does matter who the prime minister and the council of ministers are. For that, we don’t want to go out and vote. Oh, no. Urban middle class votes fall every year, say the pollsters. But for a figurehead whose decisions will rarely impact our lives, we want to exercise our right to franchise. Excellent choice.

There is a tenuous political and constitutional argument that on the off-chance that some major political catastrophe takes place, the President of India has to be more than a rubber stamp, a ribbon cutter. That is true. So by inference, any person of reasonable intelligence will make the grade. Let’s make that the minimum requirement and rejoice that it’s open to interpretation.

The current incumbent, Dr APJ Abdul Kalam, is the cause of much of this hysteria. For me, his main achievement as prez has been to open the gardens of Rashtrapati Bhavan — though others will of course disagree. Does that merit a second term? I have several reservations about him. His pro-nuclear explosion stance, his platitudes, his bad poetry — but that’s me.

Interestingly, the tenor of our public discourse is all the more fascinating for its inanity. We want Narayana Murthy because he is a good man and will be presentable to the world. Then someone says that he played the national anthem without words so that his foreign guests would not be embarrassed and he promptly becomes no longer the right person to represent us to the world. Then someone, predictably, says Amitabh Bachchan. Our only icon, why ruin it by making him a ribbon cutter?

Our venerable political parties of course are oblivious to all this hysteria. They’re merrily looking for a political candidate. Custom dictates that the only second term was the one given to Babu Rajendra Prasad, India’s first president. And to me, all presidents look alike on Republic Day. By the way, how many of you wake up to watch the parade?