100%. Need clear separation of powers.

With direct elections for an executive President, who appoints the Cabinet of Ministers and sets government policy.

In parliament, the Speaker to be seen as the leader of the legislature. MPs responsible only for laws, amendments, repeals.

The Constitution and laws need to be democratised.

Rewritten in simple language, translated into every state language, and made available as original sources online, so people can access them and understand laws themselves instead of being dependent on self-appointed custodians.
We need more local democracy and fewer regional satraps.

Dissolve the current states and upgrade 740 districts into elected Janapadas/Prefectures, to improve policy outcomes on the ground.

No more MLAs and DMs acting like local feudal lords. Bottom-up, accessible institutions.
In each Janapada, assign community policing/crime prevention to local police, accountable to local citizens.

Assign law and order, crime investigation, counter-terrorism to a new central police force, independent of executive. Like the armed forces, with parliamentary oversight.
Split the Supreme Court into a Constitutional Court and Court of Final Appeal, with clear and separate functions and duties.

Give each Janapada a system a decentralised system of courts and alternative dispute resolution mechanisms, working in local languages and jargon-free.
The issue is not that we have too much democracy, we have too little.

The current unelected and unaccountable bureaucratic and judicial institutions suffer from a "democratic deficit" and are all designed to thwart any aspirations of the people that can challenge the status quo.
"In most democratic countries, ... the police work under the control of local self-government bodies.

But in India, the police is not answerable or accountable to the local people whose lives and properties it is supposed to protect." - @MNageswarRaoIPS

https://t.co/g9timGDlWX
Many of the suggestions in the above thread may sound radical or utopian, but they exist worldwide, including here in the Indian subcontinent.

Sri Lanka being an example, which enacted such reforms despite similar levels of religious diversity and colonial administrative legacy.
For those looking for inspiration for what our next Constitution could look like, instead of copying dysfunctional and discredited models from the Anglosphere, let's learn from and improve on other Asian countries with similar challenges and experiences.

https://t.co/ECRjzl7vto

More from Politics

Handy guide for Dominic Raab and other Brexiteers, and for anyone keen to replace our EU trade with trade with the rest of the world on WTO terms...


You can't magic away the vast distances involved. Clue: we fly in only 1/192th of our trade compared to the amount that arrives via sea


But even if you invented a teleporter tomorrow, WTO terms are so bad, so stacked against us, that a no-deal Brexit will be a total economic disaster


And while the Brexiteers fantasise, real jobs are being lost, investments are drying up, companies are moving assets to the EU27 or redomiciling. All already happened and happening right now, not in some mythical


Of course, there are many, many myths that Brexiteers perpetuate that are total fiction. You've seen a couple of them already. The thread below busts a whole lot

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I'm going to do two history threads on Ethiopia, one on its ancient history, one on its modern story (1800 to today). 🇪🇹

I'll begin with the ancient history ... and it goes way back. Because modern humans - and before that, the ancestors of humans - almost certainly originated in Ethiopia. 🇪🇹 (sub-thread):


The first likely historical reference to Ethiopia is ancient Egyptian records of trade expeditions to the "Land of Punt" in search of gold, ebony, ivory, incense, and wild animals, starting in c 2500 BC 🇪🇹


Ethiopians themselves believe that the Queen of Sheba, who visited Israel's King Solomon in the Bible (c 950 BC), came from Ethiopia (not Yemen, as others believe). Here she is meeting Solomon in a stain-glassed window in Addis Ababa's Holy Trinity Church. 🇪🇹


References to the Queen of Sheba are everywhere in Ethiopia. The national airline's frequent flier miles are even called "ShebaMiles". 🇪🇹