MUST India and Pakistan always be polar opposites, the yin and yang of the world? As Pakistan rediscovers the merits of the Westminster model of democracy and restores the primacy of its prime minister, witness how India is devaluing its own.

Sonia Gandhi has just assumed the leadership of the reconstituted National Advisory Council (NAC), a body set up to counsel the government but with no constitutional sanction or tradition. In the mid-1970s, Pakistan was enjoying a respite from military rule, when India descended into totalitarianism. Now as Pakistan vows to respect its constitution (with the passage of the 18th Amendment), India is tinkering with its own.

In Westminster, the prime minister is supposed to be the prince of power, the repository of executive authority. William Gladstone, the 19th century British prime minister, even called him a good butcher of his cabinet. India, which since 1947 has mostly stayed true to the principles of Westminster, now seems to be straying.

No minister is hired without Sonia Gandhi's blessing. None is dispatched without it either. Just ask Shashi Tharoor, the recently sacked foreign minister. Sonia Gandhi's upset victory in 2004's general elections put her on the horns of a dilemma. Reluctant to become prime minister herself, she did not trust simply passing the baton to an unassuming loyalist. For one such in the past, Narasimha Rao in 1991, had broken free.

Her Congress party devised a ruse ingenious enough to make Machiavelli proud. Sonia Gandhi arrogated to herself the newly created post of chairperson of the Congress Parliamentary Party (CPP), making Manmohan Singh her deputy. She also nominated him as leader of the CPP, thereby anointing him prime minister but retaining the right to replace him at will.

The party's constitution was tampered with but the subversion was that of the country's. While India's founding fathers envisioned that the leader of the party or alliance of parties commanding majority support in the directly elected parliamentary chamber, the Lok Sabha, would become the prime minister, they never bargained for his nomination.

Instead members of parliament were meant to formally elect their leader, who would cease to be premier upon losing their support. Third-party hiring and firing was beyond the pale.

Even in 2009, when Manmohan Singh was credited by many, including Sonia Gandhi herself, for the Congress party's election victory, the same stratagem was employed. Welcome to the era of the circumscribed prime minister. The mantle of prime minister has been passed in the past, notably from Mahatma Gandhi to Nehru in 1947 and from Jayaprakash Narayan to Morarji Desai in 1977, but the hand-off was never so shackled.

Manmohan Singh's steadfast refusal to stand for election to the Lok Sabha, making do as member of the indirectly elected Rajya Sabha, too goes against the country's parliamentary conventions. No doubt a prime minister can belong to either house but no previous one has served as long as he has without joining the former. That he should have little trouble winning a popular election only fuels the suspicion that he is not at liberty to make the transition.

Opposition leader L.K. Advani has been withering in his criticism of Singh's clipped wings. The shoe though appears to be on the other foot. Upon losing last year's general elections, Advani faced intense pressure from his Bharatiya Janata Party to quit as the leader of the parliamentary opposition. Not content to ride off into the political sunset just yet, Advani looked around and discovered new virtue in Sonia Gandhi's transcending role of chairperson, which had caused him much angst earlier. He too made his party create a similar post for him.

No wonder that his denunciations of the prime minister have become muted. He even proposed cabinet rank and privileges for himself and Gandhi in their respective capacity as party chairperson but with the latter having already secured those spurs through her NAC sinecure, his request has gone a-begging. With what gumption do those who flay the flouters of constitutional propriety turn turtle themselves when convenient.

Singh has often stated that he does not know who in Pakistan to talk to, alluding to the multiplicity of power centres in the country. This is ironical because India itself presents similar confusion. With Sonia Gandhi stacking the NAC and CPP hats on two others — Congress party president, governing United Progressive Alliance chairperson — the 'who's who' in India has not been lost on the outside world. China has just extended an invitation for her to visit, the third time in three years that she would go there in official garb. Singh as premier has been to China just once. Until now, he has had relative freedom to deal with foreign interlocutors. Is this about to change? More significantly, what precedent are six years of his stewardship setting for India's commitment to its constitution?

sunil_sharan@yahoo.com