The Parliamentary System of Government in India

In a few weeks India will be actively engaged in framing the details of her new Constitution, which will be federal in structure and will embody the British parliamentary system of government both at the centre and in the units or states. At some of the earlier sessions of the Constituent Assembly, when the main principles of the new Constitution were being laid down, there was a fairly strong current of feeling in favour of the American presidential system and this found expression in certain decisions of the Assembly not only to the mode of election of the head of the federation and of the heads of the constituent states, but also, to some extent, to the relations between the heads of the states and their ministers. This current is now weakening, but it may nevertheless leave some traces in the final version of the Constitution. It may be interesting at this stage to take a peep into the history of India, both remote and recent, and see how far her people have been accustomed to the theory and practice of parliamentary modes of government