Why it’s time for a systems upgrade in the 21st century

New Delhi: Day two of the Times Litfest saw author Atul Khanna dwell on the Constitution of India where he said that our almost seven-decade-old founding document is "hugely unfit for the 21st century".
Khanna, a successful entrepreneur-turned-author, was discussing his recently released maiden book 'Between You And Me: Flight to Societal Moksha'.
Khanna, who has built enterprises in manufacturing, engineering, machine vision, life sciences and now education by building an Indian-European knowledge corridor over the years, says time has come to overhaul the structures governing us - be it permanent bureaucracy or PSUs or even our education system to align it with changing times and throw up world-beating innovators and scientists.
"Time is greater than wisdom of any age. That's what I'm trying to argue in my book. Talk as a citizen to fellow citizens," he says. Khanna admitted he has often been asked if Indians have not benefited from the current structure of the Constitution and the need to fiddle with the ‘Basic Structure’ doctrine. "I am not saying incremental progress is not being made. All I'm saying is it's being made not to its potential," he said.
Even a horrendous event such as the Nirbhaya episode, in his view, brought about a "tinkering" change in laws -- having minimal or no deterrent effect. Similarly, as far as the electoral system is concerned, it seems to have been benefiting only the politicians. That was why, perhaps, Khanna argued for divesting absolute powers of the judiciary and the executive and empower the people.
He cited demonetisation as one such example of "political monarchy" that went unchecked only because there were no checks and balances ensuring that multiple opinions had been invited before the decision was made. "Today you can wake up to any news," he says.
Khanna also described the relationship between a candidate and his party boss as that of a master and a slave, since the Constitution is silent on the internal dynamics of a political party. The party system — not governed by the Constitution — needs thorough clean-up and democratisation. Khanna also stressed on the need for reforms in the voting mechanism.
"The problem is with the rigidity of the Constitution with changes happening at lightening speed," he asserts.
With his book proposing a change, he clarifies it to be a "start of the process with the citizens and not something for vanity or royalty".