India - Introduction
| India v Pakistan | ||
|---|---|---|
| Kashmir | ||
| 2002 | Kashmir Crisis | Op Parakram |
| 1999 | Kargil Conflict | Op Vijay |
| 1990 | Kashmir Crisis | Op Rakshak |
| 1987 | Brass Tacks | |
| 1984 | Siachen Glacier | OP Meghdoot |
| 1971 | Bangladesh | |
| 1965 | Indo-Pakistan War | |
| 1965 | Rann of Kutch | |
| 1947 | Indo-Pakistan War | |
| 1947 | Partition | |
| Other Conflicts | ||
| 1986 | Indo-China Clashes | Op Falcon |
| 1985 | Assam | OP Rhino |
| Nagaland | Op Riddle | |
| Mizoram | Op Hifazat | |
| Tripura | Op Bajrang | |
| 1983 | Sikh Uprising | OP Blue Star |
| 1967 | Naxalite Uprising | |
| 1962 | Indo-China War | |
| 1961 | Invasion Of Goa | |
| 1947 | Hyderabad | |
| 1947 | Junagadh | |
| Peacekeeping Operations | ||
| 1988 | Maldives | |
| 1987 | Sri Lanka | Op Pawan |
The government exercises its broad administrative powers in the name of the president, whose duties are largely ceremonial. The president and vice president are elected indirectly for 5-year terms by a special electoral college. Their terms are staggered, and the vice president does not automatically become president following the death or removal from office of the president.
Real national executive power is centered in the Council of Ministers (cabinet), led by the prime minister. The president appoints the prime minister, who is designated by legislators of the political party or coalition commanding a parliamentary majority. The president then appoints subordinate ministers on the advice of the prime minister.
India's bicameral parliament consists of the Rajya Sabha (Council of States) and the Lok Sabha (House of the People). The Council of Ministers is responsible to the Lok Sabha. The legislatures of the states and union territories elect 233 members to the Rajya Sabha, and the president appoints another 12. The elected members of the Rajya Sabha serve 6-year terms, with one-third up for election every 2 years. The Lok Sabha consists of 545 members; 543 are directly elected to 5-year terms. The other two are appointed.
India's independent judicial system began under the British, and its concepts and procedures resemble those of Anglo-Saxon countries. The Supreme Court consists of a chief justice and 25 other justices, all appointed by the president on the advice of the prime minister.
India has 25 states and 7 union territories. At the state level, some of the legislatures are bicameral, patterned after the two houses of the national parliament. The states' chief ministers are responsible to the legislatures in the same way the prime minister is responsible to parliament.
Each state also has a presidentially appointed governor who may assume certain broad powers when directed by the central government. The central government exerts greater control over the union territories than over the states, although some territories have gained more power to administer their own affairs. Local governments in India have less autonomy than their counterparts in the United States. Some states are trying to revitalize the traditional village councils, or panchayats, which aim to promote popular democratic participation at the village level, where much of the population still lives.
The Indian Political System
The Indian political system proved to be flexible and durable, but major internal conflicts have threatened the constitution. In practice, the elected office of the nation's president has gravitated toward the formal and ritual aspects of executive power, while the office of the prime minister, backed up by a majority in Parliament, the cabinet, national security forces, and the bureaucracy of the Indian Administrative Service, wielded the actual power. The national Parliament had not developed an independent committee structure and critical tradition that could stand against the force of the executive branch. The judiciary, while remaining independent and at times crucial in determining national policy, stayed in the background and is subject to future change through constitutional amendments. The constitution itself has been subject to numerous amendments since its adoption in 1950. By August 1996, the constitution had been amended eighty times.
National politics became contests to set up the appointment of the prime minister, who then had considerable power to interfere directly or through a cooperative president in all aspects of national life. The most drastic example of this power occurred in 1975, when Indira Gandhi implemented the constitutional provision for a declaration of Emergency, suspending civil rights for eighteen months, using Parliament as a tool for eliminating opposition, and ruling with the aid of a small circle of advisers. The more common form of executive interference has been the suspension of state legislatures under a variety of pretexts and the implementation of President's Rule. This typically has occurred when opposition parties have captured state legislatures and set in motion policies unfavorable to the prime minister's party. After Indira Gandhi's assassination in 1984, her successors engaged in such overt acts of interference less often.
The main opposition to the national executive comes from the states, in a variety of legal and extralegal struggles for regional autonomy. Most of the states have developed specific political identities based on forms of ethnicity that claim a long historical past. The most common identifying characteristic is language. Agitation in what became the state of Andhra Pradesh led the way in the 1950s, resulting in the reorganization of state boundaries along linguistic lines. Agitations in the state of Tamil Nadu in the 1960s resulted in domination of the state by parties dedicated officially to Tamil nationalism.
In the northeast, regional struggles have coalesced around tribal identities, leading to the formation of a number of small states based on dominant tribal groupings. Farther south, in Kerala and West Bengal, communist parties have upheld the banner of regionalism by capturing state assemblies and implementing radical socialist programs against the wishes of the central government.
The regional movements most threatening to national integration have occurred in the northwest. The state of Punjab was divided by the Indian government twice after independence -- Haryana and Himachal Pradesh were sliced off -- before it achieved a Sikh majority population in what remained of Punjab. That majority allowed the Sikh-led Akali Dal (Eternal Party) to capture the state assembly in the early 1980s. By then radical separatist elements were determined to fight for an independent Sikh Punjab. The result was an army attack on Sikh militants occupying the Golden Temple in Amritsar, Indira Gandhi's assassination by her Sikh bodyguards, both in 1984, and a ten-year internal security struggle that has killed thousands. In India's state of Jammu and Kashmir (often referred to as Kashmir), where Muslims constitute the majority of the population, regional struggle takes a different religious form and has created intense security problems that keep bilateral relations with Pakistan, which also lays claim to Kashmir, in a tense mode.
The central government usually was able to defuse regional agitations by agreeing to redefinition of state boundaries or by guaranteeing differing degrees of regional autonomy, including acquiescence in the control of the state government by regional political parties. This strategy defused the original linguistic agitations through the 1970s, and led to the resolution of the destructive political and ethnic crises in Assam in the mid-1980s. When national security interests came into play, however, as in Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir, the central government did not hesitate to use force.
