By Gilles Verniers, IANS
Now elected, President Pratibha Patil is confronted with the arduous task of forging a name for herself in Raisina Hill and to distinguish herself from the much-acclaimed former president A.P.J. Abdul Kalam. It is a condition for acquiring more than formal “ballot-box” legitimacy and for maintaining the relevance that the presidency has acquired for citizens during the tenure of her last two predecessors. There is little space however to achieve that, given the restrictions pertaining to the post and the willingness of parties to have the upper hand on the presidency.
The first difficulty lies in the fact that she is more secretive about her talents and political visions than her predecessor and her constitutional prerogatives do not leave her much space to express them. Secondly, being a “political” president, her de facto margin of manoeuvre towards parties is further restricted. In the recent past, parties have expressed their resentment against what was termed as undue intervention of the president in political affairs, notably on the occasion of the proposal of the Office of Profit Bill. The consensus for having a political candidate for the presidency was a clear indicator of this.
To extricate herself from such a situation, she has to show both impartiality towards parties and a capacity to address issues that meet people’s expectations. To do so, she will have to express herself in domains and matters in which parties have so far shown little inclination to act in a decisive manner or that have not so far publicly divided them.
She could, for instance, clarify her position about the Women’s Reservation Bill, not so much on its technicalities as the principle of equality of representation for both men and women.
She also has the opportunity to define universal basic education as the most urgent policy to adopt in order to achieve genuine and inclusive development.
She has been vocal, during her tenure as Governor of Rajasthan, about the necessity to check female foeticide and dowry. She had also dealt with a firm hand the attempt of the government of Rajasthan to adopt an anti-conversion bill. She is now in a position to express her views at the national level.
The UPA coalition came in 2004 with the promise of “growth with equity”. If there is little she can do about the first part of this programme, she can insist on the second aspect, an area in which the government has been somewhat lagging behind during the last three years. Parties will be unable to oppose this agenda publicly and would be challenged to adopt it and deliver in a more concrete and tangible manner.
These are issues on which citizens’ expectations are very high and against which parties have no arguments. By multiplying public addresses on these issues, she would help to place them on the priority list of the government’s political agenda.
The question now is to know not only what amount of space parties are willing to leave her but also whether she is both apt and willing to address these issues now that she is in a position to induce change. The murky campaign that preceded her election has left those seeking such responses short of indicators.
Nonetheless, she did give some signs of this in her first presidential address by stressing on the necessity of achieving an inclusive growth. Her mention of female foeticide during the same address also marks a turning point in the struggle against this evil practice. One can only hope she will continue to work in this direction.
(The author is pursuing his PhD at the Political Studies Institute in Paris and is currently based in New Delhi. He can be reached at [email protected])