75 years of Independence with 72 years of Colonial Constitution??

In Bihar, Nitish is still the bus driver but the conductor has changed with many new passengers boarding the bus and many old ones dropped off without prior intimation.?In Maharashtra, both driver and conductor changed. Shinde became the driver and Fadnavis the conductor. ?Here also many passengers got added and many got dropped off without their knowledge. ?If passengers were added or removed with such surprise, then there would be chaos across India’s bus stands, railway stations and airports.?Rules governing travel do not allow any such porting and deporting of passengers.?

A week is a long time in politics, said the British PM Harold Wilson. How much is a long time for a constitution? Answer: 17 years.?This surprising answer was the genesis of this article, not the passengers in the Bihar and Maharashtra bus.?The Lifespan of Written Constitutions | University of Chicago Law School (uchicago.edu)?After all, it is the constitution, not an academic course that it needs to be changed every decade and a half.

But the average is after all an average and not a median.?Like one of my wisest friends & philosopher once told me, if the average depth of a river is 5 feet, does not mean that a 6 feet man will be able to cross it.?Maybe extremes skewed the average.?Not so.?The median was worse at 8 years and the mode was a minuscule one year.??So life is short.?Constitutional mortality seems to be a more severe problem than infant mortality.?

Fortunately, we have not faced this fate.?Our constitution is now 72 years old.?So it has aged more than 4x compared to the average life of a constitution.?But how has this life been lived till now??One way to check is the number of times the amendments have been made to the constitution.

The US constitution was adopted in 1788 and is now 234 years.?In these 234 years, it has been amended 27 times.?So on average amended every 33 years.??The Indian Constitution has been amended 105 times in its 72 years.?So on average more than one amendment a year.?

The current Irish constitution from which we took the directive principles of the state was adopted in 1937.?In its 85 years of life has been amended 38 times.?So an amendment took more than two years to be made.??Lesser than ours, but more than that of the US.?The number of amendments made is like several changes made in a plan of a building or project.?Changes should be made if necessary, but more changes suggest some overlooking by the original planners.?Stability though essential, cannot always be a badge of honour.?The second amendment of the US constitution allows keeping arms.?Shootings every other month in the US is no longer a story.?Still changing that amendment is difficult for the US.??

Should we make changes in our constitution and if yes what should we change in our constitution??

During the tenure of PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee, a commission was constituted to review the working of the constitution. ?The commission said there was no change needed but there were ten areas of immediate concern.??And the ten areas were so wide that they covered almost the whole constitution.?The constitutional review commission has identified ten areas of immediate concern (preservearticles.com)

?A review though is due as there is always a scope for improvement.?We have done better than our neighbours in the Indian sub-continent.?Though that is nothing to be proud of.?The intent of our founding fathers and the constituent assembly is under no circumstances in doubt.?But a nation is a complex entity and in India, the complexity is x times more.??That the document still survives and still serves as the basis of the day-to-day of the country means that it has passed the test of time till now.?Till now yes, but what about the future????One reaches a destination is important but how it reaches is also important.?Survival is not the only objective and comparison with our neighbours is nothing to be happy about.??But what are the areas for improvement, that can be bought about by the changes in the constitution?

The first and most critical is electoral reforms covering:

·????????Pre-poll alliance/ post-poll alliance.?Some of the governments in the country were/are a joke to the electorate – the previous MVA government in Maharashtra, the previous BJP-JDU government in Bihar, and the current JDU-RJD government in Bihar. Whom the electorate votes for has no relevance. ?In fact who will govern the states and previously even the country ( remember Dev Gowda, I K Gujral, Dr Manmohan Singh) is more a matter of either someone’s ego, money, muscle power or personal liking. ?People’s choice is irrelevant. ?Divorces in alliances are faster than that of Liz Taylor. ?The words strange bed-fellows also do not do justice to some of these alliances.?

·????????For all practical purposes at the centre and increasingly in states (UP, Assam, Maharashtra, Odisha, WB, TN, Delhi), we have a presidential form of elections.?The people of these states know who is going to be their leader if a particular party wins.?All alliances should be pre-poll and declared to the election commission including who would be the PM or CM if an alliance wins.?In case no pre-poll alliances get a majority, there should be re-election in between pre-poll alliances coming 1st and 2nd on seats where independents and candidates other than these two alliances have won. These would force most of the peripheral candidates and parties to ally before an election. ??They will not be in the market post-election for bidding by the highest buyer.?In case they change their mind for “ideological” reasons, then they resign and fight elections with the new “ideology”.

The second area is the governance of cities and towns:

·????????Most orphan people in the country as far as governance is concerned are residents of a city.?They do not know who governs them.?Everyone governs them for something or the other.?In Mumbai, bus services are run by the municipality but train services by the centre and metro services come under the purview of the state government body.?A similar state is for health care.?There are hospitals run by the centre (AIIMS), state and municipality.?These things need to be streamlined and for that, the 73rd and 74th amendments need to be implemented in spirit and powers should be devolved to the Municipalities and panchayats.?There should be a clear separation of responsibility between the centre, state and local bodies regarding education and health.??

·????????Due to this lack of devolution of powers, both asparagus eating and non-eating will not know the mayor of their city.??However, the asparagus-eating people (terminology credit: Manu Joseph), will know who is the mayor of New York or London.??

The are many areas of change but the above two top the list.?The biggest issue with the constitution is that it is not rooted in the Indian Civilizational values of Dharma. ?Before between the individual and state was the community, which played a very major role.?The Constitution removed the role of the community and put the responsibility on the state which in the 1950s was colonial and remains so in its approach.??So there were many things that the community did a good job of (arbitration in money and personal matters), but currently, the state does a bad job.?The other issues are very succinctly put by Jagannathan in this article.?CJI Ramana Is Off The Mark: We Need A Second Republic Built Around A Dharmic Constitution (swarajyamag.com)

Hence for our next 75 years to be better by design rather than happenstance or by force like the 1991 reforms, we need to make changes in our constitution. ?The rules governing our nation should be better than the ones for passengers travelling by road rail or air.?They may not know the driver’s or pilot’s name but at least they know by which bus, train or airline they are travelling.?

Wishing you all a very happy 75th year of independence.

PS: The best time a Call a spade a spade, the weakest pillar of our democracy is our judiciary, worse than the media.??