Chapter 1 : Indian Constitution at work

1. A constitution is a body of fundamental principles according to which a state is constituted or governed.
2. It specifies the basic allocation of power in society
3. Parliament gets to decide laws and policies, and that Parliament itself be organised in a particular manner.
4. Parliament has the authority to enact laws.

Functions of Constitution

1. 1st function of a constitution is to provide a set of basic rules that allow for minimal coordination amongst members of a society
2. 2nd function of a constitution is to specify who has the power to make decisions in a society. It decides how the government will be constituted.
3. 3rd function of a constitution is to set some limits on what a government can impose on its citizens. These limits are fundamental in the sense that government may never trespass them
4. 4th function of a constitution is to enable the government to fulfil the aspirations of a society and create conditions for a just society
5. Constitutions limit the power of government in many The most common way of limiting the power of government is to specify certain fundamental rights that all of us possess as citizens and which no government can ever be allowed to violate.
6. Citizens have the right to some basic liberties : freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, freedom of association, freedom to conduct a trade or business etc.
   • these rights can be limited during times of national emergency
7. Constitution provides an enabling framework for the government to do certain positive things, to express the aspirations and goals of society. i.e. free of caste discrimination
8. Constitution enable and empower the government to take positive measures to overcome forms of inequality or deprivation
9. Indian Constitution enables the government to take positive welfare measures some of which are legally enforceable (i.e. Fundamental Rights) and some of which are not legally enforceable ( e. Directive Principles of State Policy)
10. A constitution expresses the fundamental identity of a people (individual identity, collective identity, political identity, moral identity etc)
11. Most modern constitutions create a form of government that is democratic in some respects, most claim to protect certain basic rights.
12. India’s Constitution was formally created by a Constituent Assembly between December 1946 and November 1949
13. Constitution itself was not subjected to a referendum, the people adopted it as their own by abiding by its provisions
14. No constitution by itself achieves perfect But it has to convince people that it provides the framework for pursuing basic justice
15. The more a constitution preserves the freedom and equality of all its members, the more likely it is to succeed
16. The Indian Constitution, horizontally fragments power across different institutions like the Legislature, Executive and the Judiciary and even independent statutory bodies like the Election Commission, CAG, UPSC etc.
17. A constitution must strike the right balance between certain values, norms and procedures as authoritative, and at the same time allow enough flexibility in its operations to adapt to changing needs and circumstances.
    • Article 368 of constitution empower parliament to amend constitution without affecting basic structure doctrine.
    • Indian Constitution is described as a ‘living document’ as it can be modified as per society need.
18. Political & Social Democracy :- Political democracy cannot last unless there lies at the base of it social democracy. Social democracy means a way of life, which recognises liberty, equality and fraternity as the principles of These principles of liberty, equality and fraternity are not to be treated as separate items in a trinity. They form a union of trinity in the sense that to divorce one from the other is to defeat the very purpose of democracy.
19. Liberty cannot be divorced from equality, equality cannot be divorced from liberty. Nor can liberty and equality be divorced from fraternity.
20. Without equality, liberty would produce the supremacy of the few over the many.
21. Equality without liberty would kill individual initiative.
22. Without fraternity, liberty and equality could not become a natural course of things..

   How Indian Constitution was made ?

1. Constitution was made by the constituent assembly which had been elected for undivided india
2. Constituent assembly was formed under Cabinet mission.
3. 1st meeting of constituent assembly was held on 9 December 1946
4. Members of constituent assembly were chosen indirectly by the members of the Provincial Legislative Assemblies that had been established under the Government of India Act, 1935.
5. Members of each community in the Provincial Legislative Assembly elected their own representatives by the method of proportional representation with single transferable vote.
6. Each Province and each Princely State or group of States were allotted seats proportional to their respective population roughly in the ratio of 1:10,00,000. As a result the Provinces (that were under direct British rule) were to elect 292 members while the Princely States were allotted a minimum of 93 seats
7. The seats in each Province were distributed among the three main communities, Muslims, Sikhs and general, in proportion to their respective population.
8. As a consequence of the Partition under the plan of 3 June 1947 those members who were elected from territories which fell under Pakistan ceased to be members of the Constituent Assembly
9. The Constitution was adopted on 26 November 1949.
10. The Constitution came into force on 26 January 1950.
11. Although, the members of the Assembly were not elected by universal suffrage, there was a serious attempt to make the Assembly a representative body
12. Authority of the Constituent Assembly comes from the procedures it adopted to frame the Constitution and the values its members brought to their deliberation.
13. Each clause of the Constitution was subjected to scrutiny and debate
14. Constituent Assembly had eight major Committees on different subjects. Usually, Jawaharlal Nehru, Rajendra Prasad, Sardar Patel or B.R. Ambedkar chaired these Committees
15. The Assembly met for one hundred and sixty six days, spread over two years and eleven months.
16. Objectives Resolution (the resolution that defined the aims of the Assembly) moved by Nehru in 1946. Based on this resolution, our Constitution gave institutional expression to these fundamental commitments: equality, liberty, democracy, sovereignty and a cosmopolitan identity.
17. Constituent assembly adoption of the parliamentary form and the federal arrangement, which distributes governmental powers between the legislature and the executive on the one hand and between the States and the central government on the other hand.
18. Framers of Indian Constitution borrowed a number of provisions from different countries