Pre-legislative Consultation Is Key to Democratic Legitimacy in India?

Abstract

In this paper, I want to argue that pre-legislative consultation is necessarily required in democratic decisions for the reason that the recent debates on democratic theory and practice all over the world, and especially in India, has an immense challenge from the citizens to have legitimacy and inclusiveness. The law-making process becomes more authentic and deliberative when it follows that free and equal participation among citizens as to what can count as a genuinely democratic outcome through the process of public consultation. It is keenly observed now that in India the pre-legislative consultation has been very low compared to the liberal democracies of the west. Multiple factors may be responsible for this, for example, lack of constitutional mandate, legislative intent of government, partisan differences, lack of mechanism and strong civil society, lack of time, majoritarian politics, and so on. However, I am concerned with the normative implications of pre-legislative consultation for strengthening deliberative and inclusive democracy.  Why is legislative consultation, essentially deliberative (in the lower cases) in nature, required for the stability and legitimacy of the democratic polity? To find the answer, this paper is divided into three sections; and the first section focuses on the fact that in India, in the last two decades, the rate of consultation is not found reasonably high. The second section highlights in a comparative perspective that western democracies are advantageous in terms of public consultation as compared to India. Looking into empirical evidences pointed out in the first section, the third section underlines the normative arguments of the efficacy of legislative consultation to strengthen the authenticity, legitimacy, and inclusiveness of democracy. To conclude, I mention, the participatory and deliberative modes reflected in public consultation of democratic decision-making is effectively binding, genuinely prospective, and democratically legitimate.