Skip to main content

The time is ripe to do away with the parliamentary system




As the General Elections 2019 to Lok Sabha inch closer politics is becoming more intense, unscrupulous and shrewd which makes me question the entire process. Before you decipher this article, I would like to attach a preliminary note that in no way I’m opposing the noble systems of ‘government by the people’ and I too firmly believe that it is one of the greatest systems evolved by humans after applying all the intelligence that humanity could actually devote. But I for one feel that the parliamentary system has manifested all the defects that it carries with the swings of the pendulum and instead of taking a status quoits position we should take a reformative approach. We defend the ideas, system, and institutions mindlessly because that is what we have learned but we forget that they were made for the ‘welfare of the people’ and have become more of a burden than an instrument of welfare.

The reason is that contemporarily in our country instead of general elections, general rejections take place where people reject the candidates holding the office of representative due to inefficiency, corrupt nature, or other variety of reason available. Though we brag about the variety of candidates that are on offer in elections but the usual story is that usually 2 to 3 candidates are actually there to compete to win the seat and even they are all the same. Once they are tested and their incapability and incompetence become apparent, the public is still compelled to choose bad among the worst because they are the ones selected by party arbitrarilyThis is just the picture on the grass root level, the implications become more apparent on the national level where lack of leadership puts the nation in a stagnant position where nation becomes placid.

Parliamentary democracy is about the rule of the majority and by a body which controls and directs executive but I ask that isn’t this also the graveyard of leaders? Parliamentary democracy is the antithesis of Leadership and Leaders are the ones who have symbolized progress, development, and strength of the country. The period of Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and now Narendra Modi are the actual ones that have been substantial in making the country what it is now. Leadership is vital for any country and the 2014 Parliamentary election in India was fought in ‘Presidential Style’ where every vote to BJP was a vote for Narendra Modi. Elections of 2014 gave a strong government that was not chained by ‘coalitions’ and was a direct result of personality cult adopted in campaigning. Such style and strong governments are not acceptable in a Parliamentary System which is more about Political Parties and less about the person (In India NDA/ UPA comes into power, in US Obama, Trump, Clinton come to power) an it will do it’s best to throw competent leaders out of power like it happened against Indira Gandhi and the same is being planned against our current PM by collecting all the sludge available.

Our system crushes leaders who have the will and metal to rule by helping the low lying, ideologically null, and shrewd political parties who by making an unholy alliance do their very best to stop the leader from coming into power. I ask that if the leader is not fit for ruling then are these insane, caste-based, religion-based, linguistic-based political parties worth of being part of the government who can divorce their ideology and join hands with their arch rival to make a majority that never existed? This is unfair election strategy where incompetent political leaders join hands to survive the ordeal. The fundamental problem with the Parliamentary system is that it proceeds on an untrue, faulty, fallacious hypotheses that majority is a safeguard. If this would have even a hint of truth in it then the whole of Germany would not have followed the lead of Hitler or for that reason, Donald Trump would not have been elected as the President of US. Parliamentary system contradicts the Oligarchic principle that people follow leaders with a vision which is a fundamental rule of nature.

his Parliamentary system that was adopted by us worked very well till the 1970’s but now it has become devoid of the very essence of Democracy and instead of producing Leaders this system has started producing dalals of power whose even the last object of becoming a politician would not be to represent the interest of his people. Most of the people have silenced their conscience by telling themselves that this is how politics work but in actual this filth is a result of system/structure in place which has grown ‘ancient’ with time and in itself is the symptom of human decadence.

Another flaw of the Parliamentary system that glares us in the face is Lack of Accountability. Who is accountable? A body of 543 individuals which does not even function for most of the time or the Party that does not let a pro-women (Tripple Talaq Bill) bill pass because of its political interests. I can throw my leader out, people in America in can throw their President out of White House, but can I throw this deliberative body or this political party out of power?  Kicking one person out of the office is not accountability because a similar incompetent person will replace him, parties them in abundance. Even if reject the candidate the same party will put up another candidate who works on party lines and thinks according to the majority. This party or this Parliament made up of mediocre people can never be made accountable to people in such system. Parties release election manifestos every year but even if promises are not fulfilled which is the destiny of those sacred vows then also no one can question because party answers not to the people who gave it power in a Parliamentary democracy.

We are cowards who prefer an incompetent body over a competent leader because we fear that such leader though can take the country to great heights like Hitler, Lenin and Abraham Lincon did but he can also erect the tombstone of the nation. The need of the hour is to get rid of this inefficient system pseudo-democratic system where a Government formed by party getting 40 percent votes of the 60 percent people voting is the majority government.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

How to Write Essays For Writing Competitions: I Don’t Know; Just sharing my thoughts

Writing an analytical legal essay is a formidable task. Even a thought about it evokes a flurry of questions- What should be the topic of the essay? What competition/journal/blog should  I write it for? Where to start? What should be the structure of the essay? Attempting to answer the perennial stream of such questions, I bring to you a guest post from a dear friend and a prolific writer, Lokesh Vyas. Sharing his last name with the author of the great Indian epic- Mahabharat, Lokesh is a regular contributor to IP blogs like SpicyIP and IPRMENTLAW. He has also won multiple prestigious essay competition including the inaugural edition of the Prof. Shamnad Basheer Essay Competition, and the ATRIP Essay Competition, 2023. Lokesh is currently pursuing his doctorate at Sciences Po, Paris .   How to Write Essays For Writing Competitions: I Don’t Know; Just sharing my thoughts Despite the lofty title of this post, which might hint that I'm some kind of sage (an “essay-sage” of s...

The conundrum of free speech

‘ You've got a nerve, coming into this muhalla! I know you: my father knows you: everyone knows you're a Hindu!! ' screams the Midget Queen.  Boys in their school whites and snake buckle are joining in, 'Hindu! Hindu! Hindu! From his window Midget Queen’s father joins in, hurling abuses at the new target… ‘Mother rapers! Violator of our daughters…!’ and the schoolboys have begun to chant 'Ra-pist! Ra-pist! Ray-ray-ray-pist!' without really knowing what they're saying. Their victim, Lifafa Das is trying to get away but by now he is surrounded by voices filled with blood- This episode from Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children , placed in the turmoil and unrest of partition, portrays the complex magic of words. Words have strange power; they can stir emotions and cause commotions in turbulent times. And these are turbulent times. It seems as if speech has been given a free hand to prey on the life of heads that donned skullcaps, shoulders that were draped i...

Why you must read 'Sophie's World'

Most probably, the revelation of the full title of the book will be sufficient for some to grab a copy of it straightaway. Jostein Gaarder’s Sophie’s World: A Novel About the History of Philosophy is a Norwegian classic published in 1991. For those who do not find the idea of narrating the ‘history of philosophy’ in a ‘fiction novel’ compelling in itself and are still reading this blog; the book has a lot more to offer. Sophie’s World , as the name suggests, revolves around the events that take place in the life of 14 years old Sophie Amundsen as her 15 th birthday approaches. The book opens with the perplexed thoughts of Sophie when her friend suggests that the human mind is like an advanced computer; she wonders ‘surely a person is more than a piece of hardware?’ And then Gaarder knits a whole new world around her; I mean, he literally weaves a ‘new world’. In Sophie’s World, two threads run simultaneously. First, there is the story of Sophie & the mysterious Alberto Knox, fr...