Editorial 1:Sharpen the anti-defection law, strengthen democracy

Context

The anti-defection law has played a crucial role in political stability, but there are gaps which need to be addressed to make it more effective and impartial.

Introduction

The anti-defection law in India, a crucial instrument designed to maintain the stability of governments and uphold the integrity of democratic institutions, has been a subject of much debate since its inception. Introduced in 1985, the law sought to address the rampant party-switching by legislators, which frequently led to political instability. While it has been somewhat effective in curbing the practice of defection, various loopholes and implementation issues have surfaced over time, necessitating further reforms.

 

Historical genesis of the law

• Historical trends: The problem of defection has deep roots in Indian politics, dating back to the post-Independence era.
  • In the first few decades following Independence, India experienced a significant number of defections, which often resulted in the destabilisation of governments.
  • This trend not only undermined the mandate of the electorate but also raised serious ethical questions about the conduct of elected representatives.
• Nature of Defections: Legislators would switch parties, sometimes in exchange for financial gains or ministerial positions, leading to the fall of governments and the formation of new ones without fresh elections.
  • This was colloquially referred to as “Aaya Ram, Gaya Ram”, a phrase that originated from an incident in Haryana in the 1960s, where a legislator, Gaya Lal, switched parties multiple times in a single day.
  • Such incidents underscored the need for a law to curb this practice.

What was the Indian legislative response to defections?

• Indian Parliament enacted the anti-defection law through the 52nd Amendment to the Constitution, introducing the Tenth Schedule during Rajiv Gandhi’s tenure as Prime Minister.
• This law laid down the grounds for disqualification of Members of Parliament and State legislatures on the basis of defection.
•  A member could be disqualified if they voluntarily gave up the membership of their political party or disobeyed the party whip in key votes such as confidence motions or Budget approvals.
• The law was aimed at providing stability to governments and ensuring that elected representatives remained loyal to the party’s mandate on which they were elected.

What were the loopholes in the Anti-Defection Law?

• While the initial law provided some deterrence against defections, it still had loopholes.
• One significant flaw:  was the provision that allowed a split in a party if at least one-third of the members defected, which often led to mass defections.
• The 91st Amendment in 2003 addressed this issue by requiring that at least two-thirds of the members of a party must agree for a “merger” to avoid disqualification.
  • This made it more challenging for small-scale defections to occur and reduced the incidence of such political manoeuvring.

What were the implementation challenges in the law?

Despite its intentions, the anti-defection law has faced criticism and challenges in its implementation.

• The inordinate delay in deciding defection cases. In some instances, Speakers have taken several months, or even years, to render a decision.
• This delay allows defectors to continue holding their positions, thereby subverting the purpose of the law.
• The discretionary power vested in the Speaker or Chairperson, without any stipulated time frame for decision-making, has often been a point of contention.
• The lack of transparency: in the issuance and communication of party whips.
  • Whips are essential instruments used by political parties to ensure discipline among their members, especially on crucial votes.
  • The internal nature of these directives has led to disputes over whether members were adequately informed about the party’s stance, making it difficult to determine the legitimacy of defection cases.
  • While the decisions of the Speaker or Chairperson are subject to judicial review, the courts have generally been reluctant to intervene in defection cases, citing the need to respect the autonomy of the legislature.
  • This has limited the scope for addressing potential abuses of power or ensuring timely resolutions.

 

Proposed amendments

To strengthen the anti-defection law and enhance its impartiality, two key amendments are proposed.

• The first concerns the time frame for decisions on defection cases: The absence of a fixed timeline for the Speaker or Chairperson to decide on defection cases has resulted in delays and potential misuse of discretionary power, undermining the law’s intent.
  • Solutions: a four-week time frame should be established for resolving defection cases.
    • If a decision is not reached within this period, the defecting members should be deemed to be disqualified from their positions.
    • This amendment to the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution would ensure timely resolutions, prevent arbitrary decisions, and uphold the legislative process’s integrity by limiting political bias and misuse of power.
• The second is on public notice of party whips: The current lack of transparency in issuing party whips often leads to disputes over whether members were adequately informed.
  •  Solution: political parties should be provided with a framework of the service of the whip in the form of a newspaper publication or through electronic communication.
• Judicial Insight: In Keisham Meghachandra Singh vs The Hon’ble Speaker Manipur Legislative Assembly and Ors. (2020), the Supreme Court of India recommended replacing the Speaker’s role in anti-defection cases with an independent tribunal or a body appointed by the Election Commission of India.
  • In a democracy, the importance of the Speaker or Chairperson’s office cannot be underestimated, as they are crucial in upholding parliamentary integrity and ensuring impartiality.
  • Instead of side-lining this institution, reforms should aim to strengthen its accountability and transparency.
• Recommendations for Further Exploration: The Government of India must also explore various suggestions made by
  • the Dinesh Goswami committee report (1990),
  • the Hashim Abdul Halim committee report (1994),
  • the 170th report of the Law Commission of India (1999),
  • the Report of the National Commission to review the working of the Constitution of India (2002),
  • the Hashim Abdul Halim committee report (2003) and
  • the 255th report of the Law Commission of India (2015) for strengthening of the anti-defection law.

 

Way forward: Need for political will

• Importance of the Anti-Defection Law: However, its implementation has revealed certain gaps and challenges that need to be addressed to make the law more effective and impartial.
• Need for Amendments: The amendments to the Tenth Schedule of the Indian Constitution should be prioritised to facilitate the effective implementation of the Union Government’s “One Nation, One Election” initiative.
  • By implementing these amendments, the anti-defection law can be revitalised to better serve its purpose in the current political context.
  • It would ensure that elected representatives adhere to the principles of party loyalty and discipline while also protecting the democratic mandate of the electorate.

Conclusion

PM, the Leader of the House in the Lok Sabha, and Rahul Gandhi, the Leader of the Opposition, should take up the issue and ensure that the amendments are made to strengthen Indian democracy.  In doing so, the law would continue to uphold the stability and the integrity of India’s parliamentary democracy, adapting to the evolving political landscape with greater efficacy and fairness.

Editorial 2: A Nobel in hand, but where AJR’s model falls short

Context

The AJR Eurocentric framework falls short of representing the Global South, oversimplifies history and ignores diverse development paths.

Introduction

Daron Acemoğlu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson (AJR) deservedly won the 2024 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences (this year’s Nobel laureates in the economic sciences) for their research on how institutions shape economic prosperity. Professor

• Acemoğlu’s prolific output — 2,47,538 citations, with 110,912 since 2019 — speaks to the significant impact of their work.
• Their insights into the role of inclusive institutions have reshaped how we understand the drivers of economic success.
• Their Eurocentric framework oversimplifies complex historical and institutional dynamics.

What are the key arguments of AJR’s research?

• AJR’s most cited paper, with more than 18,715 citations, is “The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation”.
• They argue that the economic fortunes of nations today can be traced to the types of institutions that were established in the colonial era.
• In colonies where Europeans faced high mortality rates, they created “extractive” institutions designed to exploit resources, which stunted long-term economic growth.
•  In contrast, where Europeans could settle and survive, they implemented “inclusive” institutions that fostered growth through secure property rights and checks on power.
• AJR expanded on this argument in Why Nations Fail (2012), suggesting that inclusive institutions are necessary for sustained economic growth, while extractive institutions keep nations in poverty.

 

Deeply Eurocentric

What are the flaws in AJR’s Framework?

There are primarily five flaws with this framework.

• AJR’s work assumes that the European model of “good institutions” serves as a universal pathway to development, which is a deeply Eurocentric perspective.
  • By elevating the European experience, AJR implicitly suggest that nations should aspire to replicate Europe to achieve prosperity.
  • However, this fails to account for the diverse pathways to growth seen in different parts of the world.
• Challenge from Yuen Yuen Ang: to their deterministic, teleological model.
  • In her book, How China Escaped the Poverty Trap, Ang refutes AJR’s assertion that inclusive institutions are an ex-ante requirement for economic growth.
  • Instead, she introduces the concept of “directed improvisation”, a decentralised mechanism of institutional adaptation driven by iterative experimentation at subnational levels.
  • This process allows institutions to co-evolve with emergent economic conditions, directly contesting AJR’s static binary classification of institutions as either inclusive or extractive.
• Endogenous Institutional Evolution: Ang’s model highlights the endogenous, path-dependent nature of institutional evolution, aligning with Douglass North’s concept of “adaptive efficiency”.
  • In this framework, institutional flexibility and responsiveness to shifting economic imperatives are more conducive to sustained growth than rigid adherence to pre-determined institutional types.
  • China’s use of Special Economic Zones in the 1980s exemplifies this, enabling decentralised policy experimentation in regions such as Guangdong, decoupled from national-level reforms, thereby fostering institutional plasticity through selective scaling of successful policies.
• Causal Sequencing Challenges: Ang further challenges AJR’s causal sequencing, demonstrating that China’s rapid growth under extractive conditions — characterised by elite dominance, weak property rights, and limited political pluralism — precedes institutional inclusivity, suggesting a feedback loop where growth induces, rather than follows, institutional reforms.

The faults with western development

What are the other flaws in AJR’s Framework?

• Inadequate Explanation of Western Development: The second critique of AJR’s framework is that it cannot adequately explain western development itself.
  • AJR glorify the “good” institutions established in western Europe and its offshoots, but fail to acknowledge that inclusion in these institutions was only ever partial.
  • Western development was not driven purely by inclusive, liberal institutions; rather, it was accompanied by exclusion and cronyism.
  • Complex Drivers of Development: For example, the Industrial Revolution in Britain, often cited as a triumph of inclusive institutions, was fuelled in part by the exploitation of labour and political and economic disenfranchisement of large segments of the population.
    • Role of cronyism: the early capitalist state in the West relied on cronyism and corrupt patronage networks to manage the economy.
    • This exclusion and cronyism is systematically omitted from AJR’s analysis, perhaps because acknowledging this would undermine the ideological appeal of their narrative.
• Simplistic and Ahistorical Framework: In Kicking Away the Ladder (2002), economist Ha-Joon Chang argues that AJR overlook the role of state intervention and industrial policies in the development of today’s rich countries.
  • Protectionism and State-Led Planning: many of the nations AJR hold up as examples of “inclusive institutions” — such as the United States and the United Kingdom — achieved their industrial dominance through protectionism, state-led economic planning, and other policies that would be considered “extractive” by AJR’s framework.
  • Timing of Institutional Adoption: Chang contends that these nations only adopted inclusive, free-market institutions after they had achieved a certain level of industrialisation and wealth.
  • AJR, thus, ignore the broader political economy and strategic role of government policies in facilitating development.
• Oversimplification the complex historical processes: that shaped institutions.
  • Hybrid institutions: Frederick Cooper (2002) and Mahmood Mamdani (1996) have highlighted how colonial institutions were more than simply “extractive” or “inclusive”.
  • Diverse outcomes: In many cases, colonial powers imposed hybrid institutions, mixing local governance structures with imposed authority, leading to diverse post-colonial outcomes that AJR’s binary framework cannot adequately explain.

 

On colonial institutions

• Overlooking the Impact of Colonial Institutions: AJR’s frameworf which were designed to extract wealth and reinforce structural dependencies, benefiting metropoles at the expense of colonies.
• Benefit to Metropoles: This aligns with the dependency theory, which argues that the Global North’s development came from exploiting the Global South.
  • For instance, in Africa, colonial powers established extractive institutions to siphon off resources, leaving countries such as Congo impoverished despite their natural wealth.

Conclusion

By simplifying institutional development as a matter of “choice”, AJR downplay how colonialism entrenched inequalities, leading to underdevelopment in former colonies while enabling European prosperity. The Economics Nobel Prize celebrates AJR’s work, but their Eurocentric framework falls short of representing the Global South. It oversimplifies history and ignores diverse development paths, limiting its relevance in explaining varied development trajectories. A more holistic approach will go a long way.