How India is governed

The President is head of state, elected for five years by an electoral college of elected MPs and state legislators using a weighted single transferable vote. The office is largely ceremonial in ordinary times: Article 74 requires the President to act on the advice of the Council of Ministers, and while the President may ask them to reconsider once, advice tendered after reconsideration is binding.

The President's discretionary space is narrow but real, and appears at moments of crisis: appointing a Prime Minister when no party has a clear majority, deciding whether to accept a recommendation to dissolve the Lok Sabha, and withholding assent or reserving a bill.

The Vice-President chairs the Rajya Sabha and succeeds the President in the event of a vacancy.

Real executive power rests with the Prime Minister, appointed by the President as the person able to command a majority in the Lok Sabha, and with the Council of Ministers. Ministers must be members of one of the houses, or become one within six months.

The Council of Ministers is collectively responsible to the Lok Sabha — the mechanism that makes the government fall if it loses a confidence vote. The Cabinet Secretariat and the Prime Minister's Office coordinate the machinery below it, and the permanent civil service, principally the Indian Administrative Service, executes it.

The Lok Sabha, the House of the People, is directly elected from single-member constituencies on a first-past-the-post system, for a maximum term of five years. It can be dissolved earlier. Its membership is capped by the Constitution, and the allocation of seats between states has been frozen against 1971 population figures — a freeze extended repeatedly and now among the most consequential unresolved questions in Indian politics, because unfreezing it would shift seats towards the faster-growing northern states.

The Rajya Sabha, the Council of States, represents the states. Its members are elected by the elected members of state legislative assemblies by proportional representation with a single transferable vote, serving six-year terms with a third retiring every two years. It is never dissolved. Twelve members are nominated by the President for distinction in literature, science, art or social service.

The two houses are not equal. Money bills can be introduced only in the Lok Sabha, and the Rajya Sabha can only recommend changes, which the Lok Sabha may reject. On a confidence motion, only the Lok Sabha counts. Whether a bill is a money bill is certified by the Speaker, and that certification has been the subject of significant constitutional litigation.

Disagreements on ordinary bills can be resolved by a joint sitting, where the Lok Sabha's larger numbers usually prevail.

The anti-defection law in the Tenth Schedule disqualifies members who defect from their party, which powerfully strengthens party discipline — and, critics argue, weakens individual legislators' ability to vote on the merits.

Each state mirrors the Union structure: a Governor appointed by the President as head of state, a Chief Minister and Council of Ministers holding executive power, and a Legislative Assembly (Vidhan Sabha). Six states also have an upper house, the Legislative Council (Vidhan Parishad).

The Governor's role is the friction point of Indian federalism. Appointed by the Union and removable at its pleasure, the Governor decides when to invite a Chief Minister to form a government, when to grant or withhold assent to state bills, and when to recommend President's Rule under Article 356. These discretionary decisions have generated repeated conflict and repeated Supreme Court intervention.

The Seventh Schedule divides legislative competence into three lists. The Union List covers defence, foreign affairs, citizenship, railways, banking, insurance, income tax, telecommunications and inter-state commerce. The State List covers public order and police, public health and hospitals, agriculture, land and land revenue, local government, and state taxes including stamp duty. The Concurrent List covers education, criminal law and procedure, marriage and divorce, contracts, bankruptcy, forests and electricity — where both may legislate and Union law prevails in a conflict.

GST changed part of this picture. Since 2017 most indirect taxation has been decided jointly through the GST Council, a constitutional body chaired by the Union Finance Minister with all state finance ministers as members — a genuinely novel piece of cooperative federalism, and a substantial pooling of state taxing power.

Below the states sits the third tier created by the 73rd and 74th Amendments in 1992: panchayats in rural areas and municipalities in urban ones, with reserved seats for women, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. Their real powers depend heavily on what each state has actually devolved, which varies enormously.

The Election Commission of India, a constitutional body under Article 324, conducts elections to Parliament, state legislatures and the offices of President and Vice-President. It has substantial independence and wide powers, including the Model Code of Conduct that constrains governments once elections are announced. Voting uses electronic voting machines with a paper audit trail.

The judiciary is integrated rather than dual: a single hierarchy with the Supreme Court at the apex, High Courts for states or groups of states, and district courts below. There are no separate state and federal court systems.

The Supreme Court has original, appellate and advisory jurisdiction, and can be approached directly under Article 32 for enforcement of fundamental rights — a remedy Ambedkar called the 'heart and soul' of the Constitution. Judicial review is well established, and the basic structure doctrine from Kesavananda Bharati (1973) holds that Parliament cannot amend away the Constitution's essential features.

Judges are appointed through the collegium system, in which senior judges recommend appointments — a system with no explicit constitutional text behind it, developed through judicial decisions, and persistently contested.

Several constitutional and statutory bodies provide accountability outside the executive chain: the Comptroller and Auditor General audits government spending and reports to Parliament; the Union Public Service Commission conducts civil service recruitment; the Finance Commission determines how central taxes are shared with the states every five years; and the Central Information Commission enforces the Right to Information Act. The National Human Rights Commission and the Central Vigilance Commission complete the picture.