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I remember we had gone to London in November 1978, after the defeat of the Congress in the post-Emergency elections in 1977. A large number of media persons in a fairly aggressive mood were waiting for Ms Gandhi at the Heathrow Airport lounge. The first question that was flung at her was, ‘What have been your gains from the Emergency?’ Looking the journalist squarely in the eye, she replied in a level voice, ‘In those 21 months, we comprehensively managed to alienate all sections of the Indian people.’ A moment of silence followed by loud laughter!
So, what does one do when a party or coalition secures a decisive mandate in Lok Sabha election but finds that some of its plans are stymied in the Rajya Sabha where it is in minority? Going by the debates in the Constituent Assembly, it is clear that the makers of the Indian Constitution did not anticipate that the Upper House could become an impediment to lawmaking and governance. They also did not visualize a situation where the country’s polity would become so fractured as to squeeze and marginalize national parties while nurturing dozens of regional, denominational and caste-based parties
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Rajya Sabha. The latter’s composition is such, that the six states with the highest population and their ruling parties (rather than the ruling party at the Centre) determine the majority in the Rajya Sabha.
Parliament is the ‘Gangotri’ of Indian democracy.
Effective parliamentary democracy relies on the 3Ds—Debate, Dissent and Decision. However, over a period of time, a fourth D—‘Disruption’—has been injected into the system.
The evolutionary principle of effective functioning of the parliamentary system is that the majority will rule and the minority will oppose, expose and, if possible, depose.
In fact, though the total budgetary transactions, receipts and expenditure in Independent India’s first budget totalled a mere ₹197 crore, the Parliament devoted a good deal of time in discussing and debating it. Not only that, though the size of the First Five-Year Plan was approximately ₹2,000 crore, the Approach Paper was debated for almost four days.
The fact was that in the initial phase, economic reforms largely affected the elite, and the potential benefits were yet to percolate to the masses.
I personally subscribe to the theory that certain offices should not be sought; rather, they should be offered. I consider the Congress presidency to be one such office.
the preliminary report of the Jain Commission, set up to investigate the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi at Sriperumbudur on 21 May 1991, was released on 28 August 1997.28 Justice M.C. Jain’s interim report29 suggested that the DMK and its leadership had been involved in encouraging Velupillai Prabhakaran, the leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), and his followers.
there is a British practice established from 1905 in this regard. Queen Victoria, on the basis of advice of Lord Salisbury, concluded that the recommendation of the prime minister for the dissolution of the House is almost mandatory to the Sovereign. The amendment introduced in Article 74 of the Indian Constitution through the 42nd Amendment has settled the matter. The provision makes it clear that the president, in exercising his powers and discharging his responsibilities, is bound by the advice given to him by the council of ministers headed by the prime minister.
The fractured mandate given by the electorate created a situation that led to four general elections between 1991 and 1999.
Three members of the CWC—Sharad Pawar, P.A. Sangma (nominated as a CWC member by Sonia Gandhi) and Tariq Anwar—made a statement that no person of foreign origin should be chosen as the president, the vice president or the prime minister of India.
Rasheed Kidwai, in his book on Sonia Gandhi, relates this controversy: As recounted by those present at the meeting, Sangma slowly built a case for how the BJP campaign against Sonia’s foreign origins was seeping deep down to even remote villages. Then came the unkindest cut. ‘We know very little about you, about your parents,’ Sangma told her.
In my opinion, Sharad Pawar, as the leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, expected the party to request him, instead of Sonia Gandhi, to stake claim to form the government. After Sonia’s elevation as the Congress president, she consulted P. Shiv Shankar on all important issues rather than Sharad Pawar. This sense of alienation and disenchantment may have been responsible for his statements on Sonia’s foreign origin, and his subsequent exit from the party in 1999.
While she and the Congress members in the Lok Sabha took the obstructionist path, Singh and I held a differing view. We felt that conciliation and engagement would work better. Finally, she told us, ‘You manage your way in the Rajya Sabha and I will manage my way in the Lok Sabha.’
the repeal of the Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunals) Act or IMDT Act. Applicable only to the state of Assam, the Act provided that anybody settled in the state before 25 March 1971 was a legal citizen. Significantly, for the rest of India, the cut-off date for acquiring Indian citizenship is 19 July 1948.
Sharad Pawar started his career with the Youth Congress at the age of twenty-four, and became a member of the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly in 1967. Initially mentored by Y.B. Chavan and Vasantdada Patil, he matured into an ambitious and astute politician and has been a long-time parliamentarian for seven terms from 1984, four times chief minister of Maharashtra, and the Union minister responsible for various portfolios such as Defence, Agriculture, Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution and Food Processing. His role and position in Maharashtra politics notwithstanding, probably one
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A strong nationalist, a man of courage and conviction, Manmohan Singh was certainly not an ‘accidental prime minister’. I am convinced that the future will judge Manmohan Singh in a different light as P.V. is assessed today.
The frequent crashes of MIG-21 planes, which had already claimed the lives of 170 pilots since 1970, earned the aircraft the opprobrium of ‘flying coffin’.
Gohar Ayub Khan, a former Pakistan foreign minister claimed in his autobiography that an Indian Army brigadier had sold war plans to Pakistan in 1965 for ₹20,000. In an interview to The Telegraph, Gohar Ayub said his father ‘had accessed the plans for the 1965 war from a brigadier of the Indian Army’s DMO in 1957.’
The scandals and allegations of corruption had scared bureaucrats into what can be termed as ‘non-action’. The political leadership, on the other hand, appeared more intent on unearthing the wrong-doings of the preceding government. Search for ammunition in the political arena took a heavy toll on acquiring ammunition from armed forces.
The NDA had proposed a rolling fund in the Defence Ministry. The rationale was that defence acquisition, being an elaborate and lengthy process; it was often not feasible to complete the acquisition process within the planned financial year. Invariably, unexpected delays pushed many acquisitions into the following financial year.
Sporadic bursts of sharp increase in the aftermath of crises did not serve the real security needs of the nation. The reality is that we raise our defence budgets sharply in the aftermath of wars, when we are struck by the gravity of the immediate situation, and then reduce the outlays once the memory of the war begins to fade.
India’s foreign policy was a product of its history, geopolitical setting and the needs and aspirations of its people as distilled by its democratic institutions.
with the ushering in of democracy and a changing geopolitical situation, Jigme Singye Wangchuck (fourth King of Bhutan) discussed the revision of the Treaty with me. Bhutan now wanted sovereignty over its foreign policy and would not require India’s permission over arms imports. I was not in favour of that and told him, and that if we revisited this Treaty then Nepal may also raise a similar demand.
(NPT). The principle bargaining standpoint of this Treaty was that the NPT states would never acquire nuclear weapons and, in exchange, the nuclear-weapon states would share the benefits of peaceful nuclear technology with them.
The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) had earlier (on 21 June) withdrawn support of its 17 MPs, accusing the Congress-led UPA coalition of supposedly neglecting and adopting a negative approach towards UP. To my mind, the reasons were deeper and probably stemmed from their unreasonable expectation of getting a clean chit in the Taj Corridor case, which had Mayawati embroiled in it.
