WikiPortallus: Government of India.html

The Government of India GoI (Hindi: भारत सरकार¹ Bhārat Sarkār), officially referred to as the Union Government, and also as Central Government, was established by the Constitution of India, and is the governing authority of a federal union of 28 states and seven union territories, collectively called the Republic of India. It is seated in New Delhi, Delhi.

The basic civil and criminal laws governing the citizens of India are set down in major parliamentary legislation, such as the Indian Penal Code, Criminal Procedure Code, etc. The federal (union) and individual state governments consist of executive, legislative and judicial branches. The legal system as applicable to the federal and individual state governments is based on the English Common and Statutory Law. India accepts International Court of Justice jurisdiction with several reservations. At the local level, the Panchayati Raj system has several decentralised administrative functions.

Type of government

The Preamble lays down the type of government that India has adopted - Sovereign, Socialist, Secular, Democratic, Republic.

Socialist

The word socialist was added to the Preamble by the 42^nd Amendment Act of 1976. It implies social and economic equality for all its citizens. There will be no discrimination on the basis of caste, colour, creed, sex, religion, language etc. Everybody will be given equal status and opportunities. The government will make efforts to reduce the concentration of wealth in a few hands, and provide a decent standard of living to all.

Secular

The word secular was inserted into the Preamble by the 42^nd Amendment Act of 1976. It implies equality of all religions and religious tolerance. India does not have any official state religion. Every person has the right to preach, practice and propagate any religion of their own choice. The government does not favour or discriminate any religion. It treats all religions with equal respect. All citizens, irrespective of their religious beliefs are equal in the eyes of law. No religious instruction is imparted in government or government - aided schools.

Democratic

India is a free country; vote from any place, specific seats are given out for Scheduled social group and scheduled tribes (22%) in parliament called (reserved voters), in local body election a proportion of seats are given out for women candidates. There is also a proposal to give out 33% seats in all elections to woman candidates, at this moment there is no agreement how to apply it and which seats should be given out. The Election Commission of India is responsible for performing free and fair elections.

Republic

As opposed to a monarchy, in which the head of state is appointed on hereditary basis for a lifetime, or until he abdicates, a republic is a state in which the head of state is elected, directly or indirectly, for a fixed tenure. The President of India is elected by an electoral college for a term of five years.

Parliamentary government

All the members of the Council of Ministers as well as the Prime Minister are members of Parliament. If they are not, they must be elected within a period of six months from the time they assume their respective office. The Prime Minister and the Council of Ministers are responsible to the Lok Sabha, individually as well as collectively.

Individual responsibility

Every individual minister is in charge of a specific ministry or ministries (or specific other portfolio). He is responsible for any act of failure in all the policies relating to his department. In case of any lapse, he himself is individually responsible to the Parliament. If a vote of no confidence is passed against the individual minister, he has to resign. Individual responsibility can amount to collective responsibility. Therefore, the Prime Minister, in order to save his government, can ask for the resignation of such a minister.and the people have a say

Collective responsibility

The Prime Minister and the Council of Ministers are jointly accountable to the Lok Sabha. If there is a policy failure or lapse on the part of the government, all the members of the council are jointly responsible. If a vote of no confidence is passed against the government, then all the ministers headed by the Prime Minister have to resign.

Judicial branch

India's independent judicial system began under the British, and its concepts and procedures resemble those of Anglo-Saxon countries. The Supreme Court of India consists of a Chief Justice and 25 associate justices, all appointed by the President on the advice of the Chief Justice of India. In the 1960s, India moved away from using juries for most trials, finding them to be corrupt and ineffective, instead almost all trials are conducted by judges.

Unlike its US counterpart, the Indian justice system consists of a unitary system at both state and federal level. The judiciary consists of the Supreme Court of India, High Courts at the state level, and District and Session Courts at the district level.

National judiciary

The Supreme Court of India has original, appellate and advisory jurisdiction. Its exclusive original jurisdiction extends to any dispute between the Government of India and one or more states, or between the Government of India and any state or states on one side and one or more states on the other, or between two or more states, if and insofar as the dispute involves any question (whether of law or of fact) on which the existence or extent of a legal right depends.

In addition, Article 32 of the Indian Constitution gives an extensive original jurisdiction to the Supreme Court in regard to enforcement of Fundamental Rights. It is empowered to issue directions, orders or writs, including writs in the nature of habeas corpus, mandamus, prohibition, quo warranto and certiorari to enforce them. The Supreme Court has been conferred with power to direct transfer of any civil or criminal case from one State High Court to another State High Court, or from a court subordinate to another State High Court.

Public Interest Litigation(PIL) : Although the proceedings in the Supreme Court arise out of the judgments or orders made by the Subordinate Courts, of late the Supreme Court has started entertaining matters in which interest of the public at large is involved, and the Court may be moved by any individual or group of persons either by filing a Writ Petition at the Filing Counter of the Court, or by addressing a letter to Hon'ble The Chief Justice of India highlighting the question of public importance for invoking this jurisdiction.

Such a concept is known as Public Interest Litigation, or PIL and several matters of public importance have become landmark cases. This concept is unique to the Supreme Court of India, and perhaps no other Court in the world has been exercising this extraordinary jurisdiction.

Issues

Indian government is among the most bureaucratic in the world. The current government has concluded that most spending fails to reach its intended recipients.² Lant Pritchett calls India's public sector "one of the world's top ten biggest problems - of the order of AIDS and climate change".²

The Economist's article about Indian civil service (2008) says that Indian central government employs around 3 million people and states another 7 million, including "vast armies of paper-shuffling peons"². According to a government officer responsible for personnel, India has 80,000 "Category One" Indian Administrative Service (IAS) bureaucrats who make decisions.² Furthermore, the Economist writes that an elite of merely 5600 members "mostly runs India".² India is divided to 604 districts, size of small countries.² The Economist described how a district head officer spends 60% of his time dealing individual supplicants asking for things such as alms or firewood instead of larger issues.² Million dollar bureaucracies can be run without a single computer in the management.²

One study found out that 25% of public sector teachers and 40% of public sector medical workers could not be found at the workplace. Among teachers who were paid to teach, absence rates ranged from 15% in Maharashtra to 71% in Bihar. Only 1 in nearly 3000 public school head teachers had ever dismissed a teacher for repeated absence. Despite poorer absence rates, public sector teachers enjoy salaries at least five times higher than private sector teachers. India's absence rates are one of the worst in the world.³⁴⁵⁶ Greater private sector role with means such as education vouchers has been proposed.⁵

Finance

Taxation

The tax reforms, initiated in 1991, have sought to rationalise the tax structure and increase compliance by taking steps in the following directions:

The non-tax revenues of the central government come from fiscal services, interest receipts, public sector dividends, etc., while the non-tax revenues of the States are grants from the central government, interest receipts, dividends and income from general, economic and social services.¹¹

Inter-State share in the federal tax pool is decided by the recommendations of the Finance Commission to the President.

Total tax receipts of Centre & State amount to approximately 18% of national GDP. This compares to a figure of 37-45% in the OECD and explains why the country remains under-developed as evident inter-alia from the poor state of its infrastructure and social services compared to OECD countries. The limited resources of Government affect its ability to pay fair wages to public servants. This may well be the cause of endemic corruption at all levels of government.

Gross tax revenues of the Government of India have grown steadily from around Rs.1 billion in 1945 to over Rs.1 trillion by 1995. They are expected to reach Rs.8 trillion by 2010 at the current rate of growth. Below is a chart of gross tax revenues (before splitting shares of States) of the Government of India assessed by the Finance Commissions from time to time with figures in millions of Indian Rupees.

Below is a chart of non-tax revenues of the Government of India assessed by the Finance Commissions from time to time with figures in millions of Indian Rupees.

General budget

The Finance minister of India presents the annual union budget in the Parliament on the last working day of February. The budget has to be passed by the Lok Sabha before it can come into effect on April 1, the start of India's fiscal year. The Union budget is preceded by an economic survey which outlines the broad direction of the budget and the economic performance of the country for the outgoing financial year. This economic survey involves all the various NGOs, women organizations, business people, old people associations etc.

India's union budget for 2005–06, had an estimated outlay of Rs.5,14,344 crores ($118 billion). Earnings from taxes amount to Rs. 2,73,466 crore ($63b). India's fiscal deficit amounts to 4.5% or 1,39,231 crore ($32b).¹² The fiscal deficit is expected to be 3.8% of GDP, by March 2007.¹³

India's non-development revenue expenditure has increased nearly fivefold in 2003–04 since 1990–91 and more than tenfold since 1985–1986. Interest payments are the single largest item of expenditure and accounted for more than 40% of the total non development expenditure in the 2003–04 budget. Defence expenditure increased fourfold during the same period and has been increasing due to India's desire to project its military prowess beyond South Asia. In 2007, India's defence spending stood at US$26.5 billion.¹⁴ Administrative expenses are compounded by a large salary and pension bill, which rises periodically due to revisions in wages, dearness allowance etc. subsidies on food, fertilizers, education and petroleum and other merit and non-merit subsidies account are not only continuously rising, especially because of rising crude oil and food prices, but are also harder to rein in, because of political compulsions.¹¹¹⁵

References

^ http://www.rajbhasha.gov.in/annualeng.pdf Official Language Resolution, 1968
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h India's civil service: Battling the babu raj Mar 6th 2008 The Economist
^ Teachers and Medical Worker Incentives in India by Karthik Muralidharan
^ Combating India's truant teachers. BBC
^ ^a ^b Private Schools in Rural India: Some Facts (presentation) / Public and Private Schools in Rural India (a paper). Karthik Muralidharan, Michael Kremer.
^ Teacher absence in India: A snapshot
^ Service tax and expenditure tax are not levied in Jammu and Kashmir; Intra-state sale happens when goods or the title of goods move from one state to another.
^ ^a ^b Bernardi, Luigi and Fraschini, Angela. "Tax System And Tax Reforms In India". Working paper n. 51.
^ Tax revenue was 88% of total union government revenue in 1950–51 and has come down to 73% in 2003–04, as a result of increase in non-tax revenue. Tax revenues were 70% of total state government revenues in 2002 to 2003. Indirect taxes were 84% of the union governments total tax revenue and have come down to 62% in 2003–04, mostly due to cuts in import duties and rationalisation. The states share in union government's tax revenue is 28.0% for the period 2000 to 2005 as per the recommendations of the eleventh finance commission. In addition, states that do not levy sales tax on sugar, textiles and tobacco, are entitled to 1.5% of the proceeds.Datt, Ruddar & Sundharam, K.P.M. (2005). Indian Economy. S.Chand. pp. 938, 942, 946. ISBN 81-219-0298-3.
^ "Indif_real_GDP_per_capitaa says 21 of 29 states to launch new tax", Daily Times (March 25, 2005).
^ ^a ^b Datt, Ruddar & Sundharam, K.P.M.. "55". Indian Economy. pp. 943–945.
^ "Union Budget & Economic Survey". Retrieved on 2006-07-29.
^ "Revenue surge boosts fiscal health".
^ "India's budget may backfire | The Australian". Theaustralian.news.com.au (April 3, 2008). Retrieved on 2008-11-03.
^ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named survey

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