Fixing Accountability in Indian Democracy

India's democratic edifice, vast and vibrant, stands as a testament to human aspiration for self-rule amid staggering diversity. Yet beneath its grandeur lies a creeping malaise: a profound lack of accountability across political, executive, and judicial realms, rotting the system from within like unchecked termites in ancient wood. This essay philosophically dissects this rot, contrasting India's predicament with thriving democracies where accountability at every level—vertical from citizens, horizontal from peers, diagonal from society—forms the indispensable premise for democratic survival.

Accountability as Democracy's Lifeblood

Accountability is oxygen to democracy's flame. Democracy thrives not merely on ballots cast in the clamor of elections but on the solemn covenant that power yields to scrutiny. Philosophers from Aristotle to John Stuart Mill envisioned governance as a delicate equilibrium, where rulers serve as stewards, not sovereigns, bound by chains of answerability. In India, this equilibrium frays at its core. Politicians evade responsibility through dynastic entrenchment, opaque electoral bonds that once shrouded funding trails until judicial intervention, and a culture of impunity where electoral victories grant perpetual absolution. Executives bypass legislatures with ordinances—over 200 issued in recent terms, dwarfing predecessors—wielding them as fiat decrees that mock parliamentary sovereignty. Judges, ensconced in the opaque collegium system, pronounce verdicts with scant transparency, their appointments and conduct shielded from public gaze like oracles in antiquity.

This triad of unaccountability erodes public faith, transforming democracy from participatory ethos to performative ritual. Surveys reveal plummeting trust: barely half the populace views institutions as corruption-free, fostering cynicism that breeds apathy or extremism. Contrast this with healthier democracies, where survival hinges on layered accountability. Without it, power absolutizes, echoing Plato's warning in The Republic that unchecked guardians become tyrants, devouring the polis they swore to protect. Accountability is democracy's lifeblood, pumping vitality through veins of institutions; its absence invites necrosis, where the body politic withers while retaining superficial motion.

Philosophical Foundations of Accountable Rule

The essence of democracy pulses through accountability, a philosophical imperative rooted in the social contract theorists' vision. Rousseau posited that sovereignty resides in the general will, delegable only if revocable through constant vigilance; Locke insisted on consent renewed by governance that answers to the governed, lest revolution restore the balance. Hobbes, even in his Leviathan, implied a sovereign bound by performance, for failure invites chaos. In functional democracies like those of Scandinavia or Canada, this manifests in robust, multi-tiered mechanisms: Sweden's ombudsmen—Parliamentary, Press, and Consumer—probe administrative excesses with surgical precision, issuing public rebukes that deter malfeasance. New Zealand's electoral finance laws cap donations, mandate real-time disclosures, and empower an independent Electoral Commission to audit campaigns, ensuring money's influence remains transparent and tame.

India's political class, however, often treats mandates as perpetual licenses to rule without reckoning. Coalition arithmetic supplants policy merit, where regional satraps barter portfolios for loyalty, rendering governance a bazaar rather than a forum. Anti-defection laws, meant to stabilize, instead muzzle legislative dissent, turning MPs into party drones and weakening Question Hour to a desultory ritual. Executives proliferate autonomous agencies like the Enforcement Directorate or CBI, ostensibly for probes but wielded for selective enforcement, blurring law into vendetta—a "caged parrot" phenomenon courts themselves have decried. This executive overreach offends Mill's harm principle: state power, unchecked, harms liberty itself.

Philosophically, this rot deepens into ochlocracy—mob rule masked as majority will, as Polybius critiqued in his cycles of constitutions. Habermas' deliberative democracy demands discourse legitimizing decisions, yet India's parliament devolves into slanging matches, ordinances circumventing debate. Dynastic politics, afflicting nearly a third of lawmakers, perpetuates nepotism, evading meritocratic renewal. Here, the social contract frays: rulers forget they are trustees, not owners, inviting Arendt's banality of evil where unthinking obedience sustains systemic vice.

Judicial accountability, pivotal yet most elusive, embodies this crisis with tragic intensity. Judges, as Kantian arbiters of moral law, must embody impartiality above all, yet India's higher judiciary resists oversight like a fortress unbreached. Impeachment, enshrined in Article 124(4), remains theatrical—no judge removed in seven decades—stymied by political vetoes, procedural quagmires, and the two-thirds majority hurdle. The 1993 Justice Ramaswami scandal saw resignation mid-impeachment, preserving perks and pension, a loophole that mocks accountability. Asset disclosures remain voluntary, evading RTI's glare; collegium deliberations, black-boxed, breed favoritism whispers.

This offends Rawls' veil of ignorance profoundly: if power-holders designed systems ignorant of their station, they would demand scrutiny, not exemption. Contrast the United States, where judicial accountability blends lifetime tenure with congressional impeachment (as with Justice Chase in 1805), binding ethics codes enforced by judiciary committees, mandatory financial disclosures via Judicial Conference rules, and public recusal norms under 28 U.S.C. § 455. Germany's Federal Constitutional Court mandates transparent asset declarations, fixed 12-year terms for justices, recusal protocols, and parliamentary election oversight, ensuring judges serve justice, not self or kin. These mechanisms operationalize Montesquieu's separation of powers, fortified by mutual accountability—judges police executives, but peers police judges.

In India, the judiciary's self-regulation via "in-house procedures" post-1997 scandals proves insufficient, a fox guarding the henhouse. Philosophically, this risks Hegel's "cunning of reason," where institutions, meant to embody Geist, self-subvert through hubris. Without external anchors, judicial power absolutizes, issuing edicts on policy—from environmental norms to electoral bonds—usurping legislative turf, yet demanding insulation. Survival demands balance: accountability tempers independence, lest judges become philosopher-kings Plato feared would tyrannize.

Comparative Vitality in Other Democracies

Robust democracies endure by embedding accountability at every echelon, a premise India neglects at existential peril. The United Kingdom exemplifies parliamentary supremacy tempered by relentless scrutiny: select committees like Public Accounts grill ministers under oath, Freedom of Information Acts pierce secrecy veils, and the Ministerial Code—enforced by independent advisers—fells leaders, as Boris Johnson's Partygate inquiries demonstrated, affirming Mill's utility principle where accountability maximizes collective good. Judicially, the Bribery Act 2010 imposes stringent ethics, with the Judicial Appointments Commission ensuring merit over patronage.

Australia's evolution offers gritty lessons: post-1980s New South Wales corruption scandals, independent commissions like ICAC indict executives routinely, toppling premiers; its Senate estimates committees dissect budgets line-by-line, exposing waste. South Africa's post-apartheid miracle shines in Chapter Nine institutions—the Public Protector summoning Jacob Zuma to account via Nkandla probes, proving Madison's Federalist 51 checks: ambition countering ambition prevents factional tyranny.

Japan, culturally conformist yet institutionally rigorous, fuses tradition with reform: its Board of Audit indicts fiscal malfeasance annually, political funds scandals (like the 2023 slush fund affair) topple cabinets yearly, and the National Public Safety Commission oversees police independence. Even Brazil, amid Lava Jato turbulence, wields Federal Police and Comptroller General for horizontal accountability, prosecuting executives from all sides. Nordic models elevate the ideal: Denmark's Folketinget Ethics Committee indicts routinely; Finland's Chancellor of Justice reviews all administrative acts; Norway's Storting Ombudsman probes prisons to procurement.

These nations illustrate democracy's axiomatic truth: power corrupts unless checked, per Acton's dictum. India's divergence starkens—executive ordinances ballooned, political funding anonymized via electoral bonds (struck 2024), CBI autonomy eroded. Democracies survive by design: vertical via fair polls and referenda (Switzerland's direct democracy), horizontal via ombudsmen and commissions, diagonal via vigilant media and NGOs. India's Lokpal, diluted at birth, gathers dust; contrast Costa Rica's Defensoría, prosecuting graft fearlessly.

The Rot in India's Pillars

India's political unaccountability stems from a flawed majoritarian calculus, ignoring Habermas' deliberative ideal. Dynasties dominate 30% of seats, MPs prioritize constituency sops over oversight, weakening parliamentary tools. Executives capture regulators—ED raids timed politically—fostering "party-state fusion" that dismantles checks.

Judicial insularity compounds decay: collegium secrecy, rare impeachments (Allahabad HC case stalled), voluntary disclosures. This troika breeds entropy: corruption perceptions index India middling, trust surveys dismal. Philosophically, sans accountability, democracy hollows like Theseus' ship—replaced incrementally until essence dissolves.