There are well known advocates, such as Shashi Tharoor, of a Presidential System of governance for India to solve many of the problems associated with a multi-party unstable government at the Centre. His demand is for an India for Indians. The government is unable to provide good governance due to various local, regional, caste-based and religion based issues taking precedence over national issues such as education and healthcare. There are demands such as: the next prime minister should be from Dalits, and demand from some “backward” Muslim and Christian groups to get enlisted as scheduled caste just to get the benefits of reservation in education and government jobs. Some parties are even proposing 20% reservation for so-called “forward” communities.
The presidential system being followed in USA looks so complex and involves time consuming and expensive propositions as compared to the system followed in India. It is reasonable to expect that the elected leader from a party should get votes from at least 50% of the country’s electorate. That means the country should go for a two-party system and not a loose combination of n-number of fragmented local parties with their leader’s eyes focused on Prime minister’s “Gaddi” at Delhi. Fortunately, one country can have only one Prime Minister!
In presidential system of course, the system will always favor President from more populous states. Two or three states with large population can join together to get a president elected from those states all the time. But then, to get votes from 50% of the electorate is difficult unless the leaders are of national level with broader outlook and long term vision. Such a leader has to reach out to all kinds of population groups and come out of regional, cast/religion based petty politics such as Maharashtra for marathis only and Karnataka for Kannadigas. The country’s laws, regulations and rules should be made applicable to everybody irrespective of caste, creed, region and religion. India should belong to every Indian.
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