Book review: Sudha Pai (Ed.),Constitutional and Democratic Institutions in India: A Critical Analysis

The increased focus on state and public institutions in India in the last few years has enriched the study of Indian politics. We have come a long way from the 1980s when it was felt by scholars overseas that there is a need to look afresh at public institutions to have a more comprehensive view of politics. In India this took some more time and it is around the beginning of the 2000s that state institutions were once again focused upon and their impact on Indian democracy researched. It is now well recognized that political behaviour, while influenced by societal factors and situations, is also shaped by institutional design and the logic that informs institutional functioning. Institutional studies’ scholarship emphasizes that the existing formal institutions embody the political engagements of the past and the values a polity upholds. It also sees institutions as political actors in their own right, standing alongside civil society, religious institutions, family, and so on, and influencing political attitudes and actions of individuals and groups.

The book under review looks at certain state institutions in India mainly from the beginning of the 1990s and is a welcome addition to the literature on public institutions. It is divided into five parts which deal with the theoretical framework for studying the state institutions, the parliamentary institutions, the higher judiciary, the Election Commission and the federal institutions.

In the first part, the need for a common theoretical framework to rigorously analyze institutional functioning is emphasized. Aseema Sinha argues that institutions should be assessed through micro features like coordination, credibility and autonomy, rather than seeing them through the lens of ‘strength or weakness’. She says that without such a study of institutions we cannot understand the working of Indian democracy and the challenges that come in its way. She foregrounds the importance of studying both institutional origins and effects and thus, building institutional biographies. Vidhu Verma points out that electoral politics of the 1990s brought novel influences in the evolution of India’s democratic institutions. She looks at six commissions to evaluate their role within the larger context of Indian democracy: the National Commission for Scheduled Castes, the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes, the National Commission for Other Backward Classes, the National Commission for Minorities, the National Commission for Women and the National Human Rights Commission. She argues that these institutions work within the government’s patronage and mainly come up with technocratic responses to democratic demands. Also, they are unable to contain the impulses of a strong executive. She flags the debate about the efficacy of elected and non-elected institutions in this volume.

Part 2 of the book deals with parliamentary and legislative processes. Kaushiki Sanyal furthers the point about effectiveness of elected institutions by looking at the Indian parliament and its functioning. She shows how the parliament is increasingly facing a crisis of legitimacy and the citizens want to play a more direct role in policy formulation. Ajit Phadnis looks at the political incentives behind disruptions of parliamentary proceedings and argues that disruptions are here to stay because party leaders find such disruptions ‘profitable’. He introduces an ‘agency theory on disruptions’ to explain the stalling of legislative proceedings. K. K. Kailash highlights the executive-legislative relations in the period of multiparty or coalition governments. He shows that despite a series of multiparty governments, the executive-legislative relations in India have not undergone much change and the executive continues to maintain a hold by tweaking the system. Shashi Tharoor argues for a presidential system as for him the parliamentary system, ‘borrowed from the British’, has outlived its utility. He asks how a powerful executive in a parliamentary system is any different than a president in a presidential system.

Part 3 of the book discusses the higher judiciary—its functioning and relations with the parliament. Pallavi Bedi argues that the Supreme Court has strayed from its intended constitutional role and is on the verge of becoming a regular ‘court of appeal’ which has ramifications across the justice delivery system. Goutham Shivshankar looks at the relations between the Supreme Court and the parliament and assesses how the two institutions have shaped each other through both conflict and cooperation. Upendra Baxi discusses the creation of a ‘truism’ called ‘judicial overreach’ which he argues is a product of political propaganda; he discusses the bureaucratic, executive and legislative narratives which lead to the making of such a truism. Anirudh Burman and Suyash Rai look at the National Judicial Appointments Commission’s judgement and analyze the nature of the institutional tussle between the parliament and the judiciary. They argue that the tussle over appointment of judges is not going to solve the problems of the judiciary.

Part 4 deals with the Election Commission. While the former Chief Election Commissioner, S. Y. Quraishi, looks at the evolution of the commission and highlights the strengths of and challenges facing the constitutional body, Jagdeep S. Chhokar discusses the criminalization of politics and what can be done about it. M. V. Rajeev Gowda and Varun Santhosh discuss the pressing issue of electoral financing and public funding of elections and insist on a fresh approach to designing public funding proposals that incentivize a cleaner and transparent system. The authors highlight the need for reforms in the electoral machinery. E. Sridharan looks at the option of proportional representation in the context of the rise in identity politics in India and shows that for dealing with the problem of majoritarianism and ensuring minority representation, switching over to a PR variant is not the best solution.

Part 5 deals with federal institutions. The four articles here analyze the functioning of central commissions. T. K. Arun looks at the working of the NITI Aayog and highlights the point that by taking the top down approach the Aayog, rather than promoting its stated goal of cooperative federalism, ends up promoting competitive federalism. M. Govind Rao addresses the issue of fiscal federalism by highlighting the role of the finance commission. He argues that fiscal federalism is a work in progress that needs reforms in decentralization policies and federal institutions. Papia Sengupta looks at the origin, development and working of the National Commission for Scheduled Castes and shows how the bureaucratic maze has diluted its effectiveness. Asha Sarangi looks at language commissions and committees and discusses how these represented the regimes of the day, and as such had a significant impact in shaping rules and norms after independence. She demonstrates how a language enables one to participate and communicate, which is an intrinsic form of pluralism in society.

The book, while a welcome addition to the literature on public institutions, misses out in giving a clear direction on the study of institutions and democratic politics. First, the introduction mixes up the two questions: Whether the book is about how institutions shape political attitudes or how socio-political forces shape/change public institutions. While the book intends to take up the former, the essays in the book largely address the latter. Second, while discussing institutional studies in the west, the introduction at a few places makes a distinction between theories of rational choice and new institutionalism and at others sees rational choice as part of new institutionalism. While both positions are fine (there is a strain of new institutionalism called rational choice institutionalism), the book is not clear about what the two mean—either in conjunction or standing apart—for studies of institutions or politics. Again, while it sees rational choice institutionalism as ‘best suited’ to study the internal functioning of institutions, it does not adequately state what this approach stands for.

Third, the introduction emphasizes the need for a theoretical framework that is socially and culturally specific and argues for moving away from theories and ‘stereotypical western models’ that were developed to study the ‘advanced industrial democracies of the west’ (pp. 36–37). This contradicts the argument made in the previous pages that rational choice and new institutionalism that came up to study institutions in the United States ‘can be useful for India’ (p. 9) and are ‘best suited’ to study the internal functioning of institutions (p. 7).

Fourth, the editor contends that the studies of institutions in India have been almost entirely society oriented. While this is to some extent true, what is important is that an attempt started around the early 2000s to study state institutions in India in their own right with a focus on their internal dynamics and relations with mass politics—whether it is the Parliament, Supreme Court, Panchayati Raj, Bureaucracy, Election Commission or the Constitution itself.

Notwithstanding these anomalies, the book brings together expertise on specific state institutions, which provide fresh evaluations of and useful insights on democratic politics in India. The editor in the introduction also flags some useful issues about institutional perspectives that are vital for the study of politics.