The President of India - From Figurehead to Token?

For long there has been an impression among many that the President of India has always been a figurehead with all actual power being concentrated in the hands of the Prime Minister and his council of ministers. This is true to an extent. However the current presidential election has brought into focus the importance of a President in especially the current political scenario of India. When fractured verdicts have become more common than before the President holds the prerogative of inviting who he thinks can form the government. Also I am currently reading Turning Points by APJ Abdul Kalam. This further shows how a President can play an active role.

However our Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces seems to be increasingly becoming a token. Why was Pratibha Patil made the President? One reason was that she was pliable and not at all likely to do anything controversial or inimical to the interests of the ruling authorities. It is another matter that her post-retirement home (which was to have been constructed on Army land), her foreign trips and of late her pardoning spree have made her anything but controversial. However probably the most important reason was that she was a woman. And not only a woman, but the first woman President. When KR Narayanan was made the President there was a lot of noise made about a Dalit having become the President, never mind the millions of Dalits facing persecution and oppression, the failure of successive governments to improve their plight via reservation or otherwise.

Today we have a politician in Pranab Mukherjee who has all the essential qualifications to be the next President. But no, PA Sangma will not hand it to him on a platter. He wants a tribal to be the next President. The opposition, sniffing a different front to attack the government pounced on the opportunity. I wonder when we will move ahead of these tokenisms and re-elect a person of Abdul Kalam's stature unanimously!

Moving on, Time magazine has dubbed our PM an underachiever. I would be quite interested to see how the government and the Congress react to this. This is something that people in the country are well aware. The Time article only serves to show that outside India also the PM is losing his veneer of respectability. Of what use are power, fame or intellect if you cannot exercise or utilize them?