'Powers to citizen' is our aim: Kashyap

By Our Special Correspondent

CHENNAI, OCT. 5. If the Constitution is not to remain an inert document, but be a dynamic basis for democratic rule and ensuring the welfare of all sections, it ought to consider regional and ethnic aspirations.

The Constitution need not remain a `holy covenant' which cannot be changed. It can be made a powerful instrument of social change, ensuring basic entitlements to all citizens, speakers at a south zonal conference organised here by the National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution (NCRWC) said today. The three-day conference is part of the region-wise deliberations being conducted by the NCRWC.

Setting the tone for the deliberations, Dr. Subash Kashyap, member of the Commission, said it had a mandate only to review the working of the Constitution and not the Constitution itself. The idea was to look at the working of the constitutional, functional arms and see whether the fundamental aims of adopting the Basic Law had been achieved and to what extent.

The Constitution was not an inert document but was a living dynamic process. ``A Constitution is made all the time. It did not start with the Constituent Assembly, nor end with its adoption in 1950. It is being made by the legislature, the judiciary and the executive.''

The Commission was concerned with how to ensure transfer of powers ultimately to the citizen. ``We can look at reforms in the parliamentary and judicial system, reform in the administration, the election process and Centre-State relations and decentralisation. Above all, the question of putting the citizen in the middle of the polity,'' Dr. Kashyap said.

Mr. S. Natarajan, retired judge of the Supreme Court, inaugurating the seminar, said the election process was fomenting corruption. ``It should be possible to ensure that a citizen has a basic right to get corruption-free service from the Government.''

The veteran Parliamentarian, Mr. Era Sezhian, said a review of the Constitution itself was not misplaced, as even Jawaharlal Nehru and Dr. B. R. Ambedkar said one could not ``bind the future generation by our laws''.

The question was codifying certain aspects such as Parliamentary procedure or privileges, for which public opinion ought to be built up.

Articulating the CPI viewpoint, the State secretary, Mr. R. Nallakkannu, said his party was apprehensive that a review could lead to a Presidential form of governance or a ``two-party state''. Both these would undermine the regional and ethnic aspirations of different sections.

Unlike as the U.S., India had a much bigger population whose varied interests could be represented better only through a multiparty democratic system. A two-party system could lead to authoritarianism.

Mr. Valampuri John, former M.P., said that in the present-day, if regional and ethnic aspirations were not taken seriously, the country and its democracy would collapse, as happened in the USSR. The U.S. Constitution gave the States the right to secede. ``But it did not lead to Balkanisation of the U.S''.

Mr. S. Doraisamy of the Periyar Dravidar Kazhagam lashed out at the old order in the power echelons. The `Manu' mindset was seen in many Articles of the Constitution. He noted that Periyar had to lead huge protests for insertion the clause pertaining to `reservation', as part of the First Amendment.

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