NCERT Solutions Exploring Society: India and Beyond Chapter 10 Chapter opening — The Big Questions

A constitution is a document that spells out a nation's basic principles and laws. The chapter calls it something like a rulebook for the country.

The chapter says a constitution lays out four things:

• the framework of the three organs of the government — legislature, executive and judiciary — and their roles and responsibilities;
• checks and balances amongst the three organs, to ensure fairness, responsibility and accountability;
• the rights and duties of the citizens;
• an outline of the long-term goals and aspirations of the nation.

Most constitutions, including ours, also state the values and ideals the country is committed to — equality and justice for all, fraternity, pluralism and freedom. In fact those values are usually the basis for the laws in the constitution.

Why we need one — think of the kabaddi match in the chapter. A dispute broke out, and it was settled peacefully only because the referee could pull out an official rulebook that both captains had already accepted. A country is far bigger and far more diverse than a kabaddi field:

It was written by a Constituent Assembly over a period of almost three years.

The members deliberately came from India's diverse regions, professions and social groups, so that the document would speak for the whole country. Dr. Sachidananda Sinha, who presided at the very start of the process, wished the Assembly's proceedings to be marked “not only by good sense, public spirit, and genuine patriotism, but also by wisdom, toleration, justice, and fairness to all”.

Both fed straight into it, because many of the people writing the Constitution had themselves lived through the freedom struggle and had grown up in that civilisational heritage.

The framers also followed the Indian tradition of ā no bhadrāh kratavo yantu viśhwatah — “Let noble thoughts come to me from every side” — and studied the constitutions of France, USA, UK, Ireland and Australia. From France came ‘liberty, equality, fraternity’; from Ireland, the Directive Principles of State Policy; from the USA, the idea of an independent judiciary.

The key features, as the chapter sets them out:

• Three organs of government with separated powers — the legislature makes laws, the executive (headed by the prime minister) implements them, and the judiciary checks that laws agree with the Constitution.
• Clear roles, functions, responsibilities and accountability defined for each organ.
• A three-tier system of government — central, state and local (Panchayati Raj) — with some functions reserved for the Centre and others assigned to the States.
• An electoral system that enables every eligible citizen of the country to vote.
• Fundamental Rights — promises that must be kept, and that you can go to court to claim.
• Fundamental Duties — what each citizen owes the nation.
• Directive Principles of State Policy — the social and economic vision the framers had for India; goals the government should work towards.
• A Preamble that holds the guiding values — sovereign, socialist, secular, democratic republic; justice, liberty, equality, fraternity.

Why it is still relevant. Because it was designed to grow. The chapter calls it a living document:

Three examples from the chapter show this working: Fundamental Duties (Part IV-A) were added in 1976; the Panchayati Raj system was integrated through the 73rd Amendment in 1992; and in 2004 the Supreme Court held that flying the national flag at home is part of the Fundamental Right to Freedom of Expression.