Question.2 :-How the office of the US President is different from that of the Indian President?

Answer :-US President has more power than Indian in their countries .

US President takes major decisions of USA he heads the legislation

While in case of Indian he is more of a ceremonial person

All bills passed are discussed and decided and framed at Parliament itself

Indian President just signs to make it into action .He also commands the Armed Forces but it is
done on approval only by the pm 's decision

Independence of office

The Indian President needs to act as per the advice of the Council of Ministers (CoM) while
discharging his duties. The CoM takes all the decisions pertaining to the affairs of the country
and executes them under the President’s name.

In the US, the members of the cabinet are not members of the Congress and are not
responsible to it. The cabinet members are appointed by the President and they are liable to be
dismissed by the President. The American President has the power to determine the policy of
his government independently without any external interference.

Manner of election

US president is more or less directly elected whereas the Indian president is indirectly elected.
The advantage of the directly elected head of the government is the stability of the
government. Unlike Indian Prime Minister American President is not overpowered by the
“compulsions of coalition politics”

Head of the State

The US President is both the Head of the State and Head of the Government, whereas the
Indian president is only the head of the State. President of the US is the real executive. Indian
President like the British monarch is only a titular head.

Term of office
American President holds the office for 4 years and he can seek re-election only once, while the
Indian president holds the office for 5 years and is eligible for re-election any number of times.

Responsibility to Legislature

The US president is not part of any legislature and is not responsible to the legislatures. In India,
the Parliament includes the President and the two houses- Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha.

Removal process

Both the American and Indian Presidents can only be removed from the office through
impeachment. In India either house can initiate impeachment proceedings against the
president and with the concurrence of the other house can impeach the President. In US the
power to impeach solely lies with the Senate (upper house).

Emergency powers

Indian President wields huge powers during emergency situations. He can proclaim both
external and internal emergencies. Indian President can declare emergency in a state, dissolve
state legislature and dismiss the state council of ministers. During financial emergency, he has
the power to reduce the salaries of all the government officials including that of the Supreme
Court and High Court judges. He has a formidable list of executive, financial and legislative
powers which he can exercise on the advice of the cabinet during emergency.

Veto power

Indian President has comparatively lesser veto power than the President of US. The President of
US can veto a bill passed by the Congress. He needs to sign the bill if it is once again passed by
two-thirds majority of both the houses.

The Indian President on the other hand can send the bill for reconsideration only once. If the
bill is passed again even by a simple majority in the Parliament he is obliged to sign the bill.

Pocket veto
US President can exercise his pocket veto power by not signing the bill for 10 days if he knows
the session of the congress will end within 10 days. In such cases the bill dies.

Indian President can keep the bill for indefinite period as there is no constitutionally prescribed
time limit to give his assent. The President can use his pocket veto if the fall of the government
appears imminent. However, he has to act as per the advice of the new government and cannot
take his own decision if the current government falls. Pocket veto was first exercised by the
President Giani Zail Singh with respect to the Indian Postal Bill which was passed by the Rajiv
Gandhi government. Subsequently, the new government withdrew the bill in 1989.

State bills

Certain state bills need the previous consent of the president and he possess absolute veto
power with respect to some types of state bills. The US President does not have such powers.

Dissolving the legislature

The Indian President can dissolve the Parliament while the US President does not have such
powers.

Question 1:-How does the American presidential system differ from the Indian parliamentary
system?

Answer :-Concerns over presidential system

Some Indian thinkers have had valid concerns. Professor Ramesh Thakur, an ex-United Nations
colleague of Tharoor, outlined many of them recently in a column entitled “In Parliament’s
Defence”. He says the fault for India’s ailing democracy “lies not in the system but in politicians
who have corrupted the institutions”.

He argues that parliamentary democracies are more stable and decisive because since powers
are fused, executive-legislative clashes are rare. The presidential system frustrates the
executive’s capacity to govern, he argues, citing America’s “permanent gridlock”. He calls the
parliamentary system a “stabiliser” in societies with sectarian divisions because coalition
governments reflect social and political diversity. And he claims that parliamentary systems
offer better protection against a bad and incompetent head of government.

The major difference between these two systems is that in a Presidential system, the executive
leader, the President, is directly voted upon by the people (Or via a body elected specifically for
the purpose of electing the president, and no other purpose), The President is nominal head of
the state in a Parliamentary form of government. He is elected not directly by the people but
members of the electoral college in accordance with the system of proportional representation
by means of a single transferable vote.

In the Presidential System, it is more difficult to enact legislation, especially in the event that
the President has different beliefs than the legislative body. The President only responds to the
people, the legislative branch can't really do anything to threaten the President. As a result, he
can make it more difficult for the legislative body to do anything.

In the Parliamentary system, if the Parliament doesn't like the Prime Minister, they can cast a
vote of no confidence and replace him. This tends to make the executive leader subservient to
the Parliament.

The US federalism is very strong and more rigid as envisaged in their Constitution by its leaders.
It is more federal than unitary in character. Whereas, India is more unitary than federal and we
can even say that it is a quasi-federal state.

Drawbacks in current system

One major sign of a good system of government is how well it is shielded from being corrupted
or captured by popular leaders. Our parliamentary system has failed this test from the very
beginning. Jawaharlal Nehru respected institutions but was able to bend them according to his
personal will. Indira Gandhi made our institutions so subservient that she almost ended
democracy here. And PM Narendra Modi has been riding roughshod over them for the past six
years.

Any concern that presidential democracies are less stable than parliamentary ones is really
academic. The world’s longest-running democracy is the United States, and hers is the only
presidential model that Tharoor, myself and others have recommended. “The US constitutional
continuity is exceptional,” Thakur admits. Every other presidential regime alters the basic
balance of powers from the US original, usually making the President more powerful at the
expense of the Legislature.

Stability in presidential system

But there is no concern about the stability of presidential governments. Parliamentary regimes
can take forever to form and may fall at any time. They are notorious for their instability around
the globe.

In the last roughly 70 years, while India has had 27 administrations, Japan 35, Israel 41 and Italy
a whopping 65, the US is nearing the end of her 16th. India tried to address this instability by
passing anti-defection laws, but that had the unfortunate consequence of making MPs and
MLAs mere bondsmen to political party bosses.

Any concern that presidential democracies are less stable than parliamentary ones is really
academic. The world’s longest-running democracy is the United States, and hers is the only
presidential model that Tharoor, myself and others have recommended. “The US constitutional
continuity is exceptional,” Thakur admits. Every other presidential regime alters the basic
balance of powers from the US original, usually making the President more powerful at the
expense of the Legislature.

Stability in presidential system

But there is no concern about the stability of presidential governments. Parliamentary regimes
can take forever to form and may fall at any time. They are notorious for their instability around
the globe.

In the last roughly 70 years, while India has had 27 administrations, Japan 35, Israel 41 and Italy
a whopping 65, the US is nearing the end of her 16th. India tried to address this instability by
passing anti-defection laws, but that had the unfortunate consequence of making MPs and
MLAs mere bondsmen to political party bosses.

Any concern that presidential democracies are less stable than parliamentary ones is really
academic. The world’s longest-running democracy is the United States, and hers is the only
presidential model that Tharoor, myself and others have recommended. “The US constitutional
continuity is exceptional,” Thakur admits. Every other presidential regime alters the basic
balance of powers from the US original, usually making the President more powerful at the
expense of the Legislature.

Stability in presidential system

But there is no concern about the stability of presidential governments. Parliamentary regimes
can take forever to form and may fall at any time. They are notorious for their instability around
the globe.

In the last roughly 70 years, while India has had 27 administrations, Japan 35, Israel 41 and Italy
a whopping 65, the US is nearing the end of her 16th. India tried to address this instability by
passing anti-defection laws, but that had the unfortunate consequence of making MPs and
MLAs mere bondsmen to political party bosses.

Lastly, with respect to each system’s ability to remove a failing chief executive, impeachment is
more effective than a vote of no confidence. While the former is a constitutional provision, the
latter is left to day-to-day politics. As we know, parliamentary parties never stop politicking to
bring a government down.

India is unfamiliar with the presidential system, and it would take a great national effort to
make such a switch. But familiarity is a poor reason to stick to a failing system.

Presidential and Parliamentary form of Government

United States follows the presidential form of the Government and India follows the
parliamentary form.

In a presidential system, the central principle is that the legislative, executive and judicial
branches of government are separate. This leads to the separate election of president, who is
elected to office for a fixed term, and only removable for gross misdemeanor by impeachment
and dismissal.US citizens technically vote for “electors” and not the presidential candidates
themselves, who subsequently elect the President.

In the US presidential system, the President is both the chief executive of the government and
the head of state.
India follows the parliamentary system of government. Indian Parliament is a bicameral
legislature composed of the President of India and the two houses: the Rajya Sabha (Council of
States) and the Lok Sabha (House of the People). The President in his role as head of legislature
has full powers to summon and prorogue either house of Parliament or to dissolve Lok Sabha.

India’s parliamentary system does not allow citizens to directly choose the head of the
government.In India the Head of state is different from the Head of the government.

Political parties:

The United States has two prominent parties that have the most power the Republican Party
and the Democratic Party, both of which are built on a specific ideology. Although the
Libertarian Party, Green Party, and other smaller parties exist in US but they are as big as the
two major ones.

India, however, has many parties that operate on the different regional level. The two major
political parties of India are the Bharatiya Janata Party and Indian National Congress apart from
these two, India is riddled with countless other regional parties which often differs from one
state to the other.

Electoral system

According to the US government website, In the US Electoral College system, each state gets a
certain number of electors based on its total number of representatives in Congress. Each
elector casts one electoral vote following the general election; there are a total of 538 electoral
votes. The candidate that gets more than half (270) wins the election.

Members of Lok Sabha (House of the People) or the lower house of India's Parliament are
elected by being voted upon by all adult citizens of India, from a set of candidates who stand in
their respective constituencies. The MPs of the party or alliance with majority seats choose
their leader as the head of the government, who becomes Prime Minister of India.

Voting system

US uses ballot to cast votes and India uses EVM machines for voting.

There is one major disadvantage of the Indian election system is that the people don’t have the
choice to elect their Head of State directly.