One of the letters I received in response to last week’s column came from a former chief justice of Himachal Pradesh, who suggested that we begin a public debate on why we should not switch to a presidential system of government. This column supports the idea from the bottom of its Fifth Columnist heart.

The two most obvious benefits of directly electing a president are that he (or she) would need to prove that he had the support of the whole country, and the second is that he could choose his cabinet from outside the ranks of our elected representatives.

Governance in the 21st century requires administrators who are technically competent to handle their jobs, not men who are there just because they are the people’s choice. One of the reasons why Indian infrastructure is being built at bullock-cart pace despite lagging so much behind the rest of the world is that our ministers for power, transport, urban development and, for instance, telecommunications, are often men without any knowledge of the subject they are in charge of.

We can no longer afford on-the-job training. If the Indian economy is doing better today than ever before, it is despite government, not because of it. But think how much faster things would happen if we had good governance? It’s time to talk of change.