India Government

Articles of Impeachment are precise statement of the facts upon which an impeachment of a government official is based. In the US Constitution under Article I Section 3, for example, the President can be impeached and removed only for Treason, Bribery and other high crimes and misdemeanors. The House of Representatives draws up and votes on the Articles of Impeachment stating the facts that allegedly amount to those offenses. Articles of Impeachment are likened to the counts of an indictment against a defendant in a criminal case.

Note: Impeachment refers to the process. Impeachment does not mean removal. A conviction for impeachment means automatic removal from office.

A significant point of difference between the relationship of the two Houses of Parliament and that of the two Houses of the State legislature (wherever the two Houses exist) is the comparatively less important role which the Legislative Council plays in contrast to that of the Council of States. The Council of States has, excepting in the field of Money Bills, co-equal powers with the House in all legislative matters. When there is an irreconcilable conflict between the two, the deadlock is resolved in a joint sitting of the two Houses. In the State legislature, on the contrary, the Council is designed to play a definitely inferior role.

The functions of the Legislative Council are of an advisory nature only. When a Bill goes to the Council for the first time from the Assembly, the Council has four alternative courses of action:

• It may reject the Bill;
• It may amend the Bill;
• It may take no action on it (but when three months have elapsed since its receipt by the Council and the Council does not inform the Assembly as to what action it has taken on the Bill, it is deemed to have been rejected by the Council); and
• It may pass the Bill as sent by the Assembly.

In the first three cases, the Assembly takes up the consideration of the Bill for a second time. It may or may not accept the amendments made by the Council and pass the Bill. It now goes for the second time to the Council which can adopt any of the above alternative courses of action except that it can delay the Bill only for a month instead of the three months in the first instance. The Assembly acts again according to the same procedure as before if the Council does not again with it. Thus, only two times the Bill travels from the Assembly to the Council and the latter has only the power of a suspensory veto, the first time for a period of three months and the second time for a month. These provisions clearly establish the absolute superiority of the Assembly over the Council. In respect of Money Bills, the powers of the State Assembly are the same as those of the Lok Sabha. There is also a special procedure prescribed for financial matters on the pattern that obtains in Parliament.

Parliament House is the name of government buildings in several countries, and a gay resort in Orlando, Florida, USA. Generally the government buildings are (or were) used by the national legislatures.

Government Buildings

• Parliament House (Edinburgh, Scotland) The Parliament Hall in Old Town of Edinburgh dates from 1639 and the buildings now house the Supreme Courts of Scotland. A modern building for the Scottish Parliament was completed in 2004 in Holyrood.
• Parliament House (Canberra, Australia) The Provisional Parliament House was the seat of government from 1927 to 1988. (From 1901 to 1927, the legislature met in Parliament House in Melbourne.) A modern Parliament House was opened in 1988. There are also existing halls named Parliament House in Adelaide, Brisbane, Darwin, Hobart, Perth, and Sydney.
• Parliament House (Wellington, New Zealand) Although built to replaced an older hall destroyed in 1907, the new Parliament building was not used until 1918, and not completely finished until 1922. The official dedication by Queen Elizabeth II did not take place until 1995.
• Parliament House (or "Jatiyo Sangsad Bhaban", Dhaka, Bangladesh) The building was completed in 1982 to house the National Assembly.
• Parliament House ( or "Sansad Bhavan", New Delhi, India) Built between 1921 and 1927 to house the Council of State, the Central Legislative Assembly and the Chamber of Princes.
• Parliament House (Islamabad, Pakistan) Houses the Majlis-e-Shoora (Council of Advisors) of Pakistan : the lower house is the National Assembly and the upper house is the Senate.
• Parliament House (Singapore) The name given both the old legislative structure and the modern one opened in 1999.

The New Parliament House Resort (Orlando, Florida)The 130-room hotel and resort is built on Rock Lake in Orlando. It opened in 1975 as the "Parliament House Motor Inn", and underwent a major renovation and expansion in 2000 and 2001.

The recent press reports on the state of Indian education have been depressing. The government responds to these in the same, standard way---it picks holes in the analysis, deflects accountability, says that the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act will solve all these problems, etc. The intention of the RTE Act is very good that child in India aged 6-14 has the fundamental right to education. But the RTE Act continues to lay emphasis on what inputs the bureaucrats and political forces believe are necessary to have better education in India.

Some key clauses of the RTE Act say that no child can be held back until the completion of elementary education, unrecognized schools are banned, donations and capitation fees are banned, interviews are banned, 25% of seats in private schools are to be reserved for the poor (to be reimbursed, based on a formula, by the state), the responsibility to get kids into schools is with the government and all schools have to adhere to the prescribed norms and standards within three years. Some of these clauses are very noble, but the devil lies in the details and in the delivery. I will look at one of these issues---the norms set for schools.

The human resource development minister had said that (a) the education system is not delivering, (b) India has a shortfall of 1.2 million teachers and (c) we need to invest more in education. The gap in education needs and supply is huge and the investment required is way beyond what the government can invest. So, the rational strategy would be to allow schools to proliferate. Yes, there will be more bad schools (we anyway already have a proliferation of them today), but people will have choice and schools will have to compete to fill up their classrooms. C. Rangarajan, chairman of the Prime Minister's economic advisory council, has said that "competition is the best safeguard to protect consumers". As capacity ramps up fast, the poorly run schools will be forced to improve or close down---they will be forced to focus on outputs.

But instead of allowing schools to proliferate, the RTE Act focuses on inputs---infrastructure, teacher qualification and compensation, standardized textbooks and curriculum, etc. Many schools will not be able to meet these criteria by the end of three years. The impact will be felt the most by the private, unaided budget schools, where enrolment numbers are growing fast and which many parents prefer over government schools. These budget schools do not have the financial means to meet the criteria set. They invest in basic infrastructure, their teachers are not necessarily qualified and are paid low salaries (Rs3,500 per month against Rs15,000+ at a municipal schools)---all because these schools charge a low fee of around Rs200-500 per month, which poorer parents can afford. Many parents prefer to pay a fee and send their kids to a private school because they have lost faith in government schools and, in many cases, the teachers in private schools are more passionate and dedicated.

Not all government schools are bad. Similarly, not all private schools are good. But low-cost private schools are the ones that can help reduce the education gap in India. The RTE Act could effectively shut down these schools.

Recently, the Centre for Civil Society helped play a role in helping these schools get together to form an association---National Independent Schools Alliance---to articulate their concerns about the RTE Act and to work on improving standards and governance in their schools. The RTE Act will deter fresh investment in the K-12 (kindergarten to class XII) segment, according to a December 2011 report, Indian Education, by Anand Rathi Research.

Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, in their book Poor Economics, say, "Somewhat bizarrely, the issue of learning is not very prominently positioned in international declarations...the implicit assumption, presumably, was that learning would follow from enrolment. But, unfortunately, things aren't that simple."

In conclusion, the RTE Act will neither help get significantly more number of kids into schools nor will improve the learning quality of kids drastically. It is time the government started focusing on output (i.e. the quality of learning) instead of inputs in education. And only then will India perform better in education surveys and, more importantly, reap the benefits of its demographic dividend.

Therefore the RTE Act can't be called as bad but should be called as inadequate, insufficient and very dilatory.