Singh Parivar

: was a part. This goes against the grain of past practice and is indirectly a show of no-confidence. It does not show the coalition partners in a good light.

Minutes of cabinet meetings are always terse and incorporate only the action points. In situations where some debate or disagreement surfaces, minutes may mention ‘after discussion’. In case the disagreement was strong, minutes may refer to ‘after a detailed discussion’. But in all cases all decisions are deemed to be unanimous. Once a decision is taken in the cabinet, no hint of lack of solidarity should be expected in a properly functioning system.

Walter Bagehot, if alive, would surely have raised an eyebrow. Right now he would be turning inside his coffin. Or maybe not. Because Bagehot would have had great difficulty defining India’s current governing structure, as it has evolved over the past few decades.

Nominally, we are a parliamentary democracy. However, in practice, many features of a presidential system have surfaced, and got integrated with our governance mechanism. For instance, the rise of the prime minister’s office in terms of power, prestige, and intervention capability has been palpably in evidence since the 1980s. The office of the special assistant ruling the roost in ministries, cutting into the legitimate domain of the secretary while acting at the behest of the minister, is a case in point. Indeed, it is a bizarre fact that real presidential powers in the country vest not with the chief executive but with a party functionary!

Likewise, the chief minister’s secretariat is now supreme in most states, and the formally constituted machinery has been by-passed in many cases (for example, that police station officers’ transfers were done through a computer in the CM’s office has been well-known for many years; I recently understood that even the postings and transfers of constables are increasingly being done through this route). To complicate matters further, we also have traces of the Moghul way of functioning creeping into the system — the trusted henchman is allowed to do whatever he wants, so long he shows loyalty and pays a tribute.

All the above may not be true everywhere; there may be a trace of exaggeration here and there; but these are unmistakable trends in our governance pattern. Bagehot is perfectly entitled to get confused about the system of governance that has evolved in India over the years.

In a democracy, the parliament is the supreme authority,...

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