Indian Constitution: Why and How? - NCERT Notes UPSC

Factors Responsible for Effectiveness of Constitution

Mode of Promulgation

Substantive Provisions of a Constitution

Balanced Institutional Design

Formation of Indian Constitution

Composition of the Constituent Assembly

The Principle of Deliberation

Procedures

Inheritance of the Nationalist Movement

Institutional Arrangements

Provisions Adopted from Constitutions of Different Countries:

Interesting Points

Need of Constitution

Constitution allows coordination and assurance: It provides a set of basic rules that allow for minimal coordination amongst members of society.

• For minimal degree of coordination: Any group will need some basic rules that are publicly promulgated and known to all members.
• Enforcement of rules: Their enforcement gives an assurance to everybody that others will follow these and there will be punishment for not following them.

Specification of decision-making powers: It specifies who has the power to make decisions in society and decides how the government will be constituted.

• It is a body of fundamental principles according to which a state is constituted or governed.
• Specifies the basic allocation of power in a society: It decides who will make the laws.
• In the Indian Constitution, Parliament gets to decide laws and policies.

Limitations on the Powers of Government

• Need: If laws made by the government based on certain procedures are found to be unjust and unfair.
• It sets some limits on what a government can impose on its citizens. These limits are fundamental in the sense that government may never trespass them.
• It specifies certain fundamental rights that all of us possess as citizens and which no government can ever be allowed to violate such as protection from being arrested arbitrarily.
• Citizens will normally have the right to some basic liberties: to freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, freedom of association, freedom to conduct a trade or business etc.
• Specifies circumstances when these rights may be withdrawn: These rights can be limited during times of national emergency.

Aspirations and Goals of a Society

It enables the government to fulfil the aspirations of a society and create conditions for a just society.

• Most of the older constitutions limited themselves largely to allocating decision-making power and setting some limits to government power.
• Societies with deep entrenched inequalities of various kinds will not only have to set limits on the power of government but they will also have to enable andempower the government totake positive measures to overcome forms of inequality or deprivation.
• For example, India aspires to be a society that is free of caste discrimination and for this the government will have to be empowered to take all the necessary steps to achieve this goal.
• The Constitution makers thought that each individual in society should have all that is necessary for them to lead a life of minimal dignity and social self-respect - minimum material well-being, education etc. So, the Indian Constitution enables the government to take positive welfare measures some of which are legally enforceable.

The Fundamental Identity of People

• People as a collective entity come into being only through the basic constitution. It is by agreeing to a basic set of norms about how one should be governed, and who should be governed that one forms a collective identity.
• National identity:
  • Different nations embody different conceptions of about the relationship between the different regions of a nation and the central government. This relationship constitutes the national identity of a country.

  Understand the basics of the Constitution by M.Puri Sir, our faculty for Polity, IR, and Governance and ace your UPSC exam preparation:

  

  Interesting Points

  • Enabling provisions of the Constitution: The Constitution give powers to the government for pursuing collective good of the society.
    • Constitution of South Africa: It assigns many responsibilities to the government: it wants the government to take measures to promote conservation of nature, make efforts to protect persons or groups subjected to unfair discrimination etc.
    • Case of Indonesia: The government is enjoined to establish and conduct national education system.
    • Since 1948, Nepal had multiple constitutions.
    • The 1990 constitution introduced a multiparty competition, though the King continued to hold final powers in many respects.
    • The King was not ready to give up powers and took over all powers in October 2002.
    • Finally, under pressure of popular agitation, the King had to install a government acceptable to the agitating parties.
    • In 2008, Nepal emerged as a democratic republic after abolishing the monarchy.
    • Finally, Nepal adopted a new constitution in 2015.

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