Does India Need a New Constitution?

Writing in Quartz, Atanu Dey and Rajesh Jain have a very interesting argument that historically slow growth and many of India’s other problems can be traced back to its extractive constitution, which was largely inherited from the British.

For nearly a century, India was under comprehensive colonial British rule. As can be rationally expected, the government that the British imposed on India was not primarily directed towards development, but rather towards extraction. That is only reasonable because wealth extraction is the rationale for colonial rule.

The British, therefore, created the institutional structures, which necessarily includes the government that controlled India through comprehensive government control of the economy. This structure administration and control was left intact when the British decided to leave India, and was taken over by the government of Independent India. Although India attained political independence from the British raj, Indians did not become free of a controlling—and extractive—government.

…The conclusion has to be that India’s problem is structural and systemic, and not idiosyncratic. If the constitution were to change, the ultimate rules of the game would change, the policies (the derived rules) will change, and thus the action on the ground (the play of the game) will change, and therefore the outcome will change.

India needs a new constitution that is consistent with a nation of free individuals living in a complex, modern, large economy. This modern constitution has to be one that guarantees economic freedom to the individual, prohibits the government from making any laws that discriminate among citizens, guarantees freedom of speech and the press, prohibits the government from entering into businesses that are properly the domain of the private sector, and so on. In other words, India needs a constitution that protects the comprehensive freedom of the individual: economic, social and political.

What would be the best form of constitution for India? Westminster or Presidential? First past the post or proportional rule?  Single-member or mixed-member districts? Plurality rule or Borda count? Federalism? Certainly. But what kind of federalism enforced in what way? A Supreme court? How appointed? And what would be the most important rights to codify in a bill of rights?