C RITICISMS The Indian Constitution can be subjected to many criticisms of which three may be briefly mentioned: first, that it is unwieldy; second, that it is unrepresentative and third, that it is alien to our conditions. The criticism that it is unwieldy is based on the assumption that the entire constitution of a country must be found in one compact document. But this is not true even of countries such as the US which do have a compact constitution. The fact is that a country’s constitution is to be identified with a compact document and with other written documents with constitutional status.
Thus, it is possible to find important constitutional statements and practices outside one compact document. In the case of India, many such details, practices and statements are included in one single document and this has made that document somewhat large in size. Many countries for instance, do not have provisions for election commission or the civil service commission in the document known as constitution. But in India, many such matters are attended to by the Constitutional document itself.
A second criticism of the Constitution is that it is unrepresentative. Do you remember how the Constituent Assembly was formed? At that time, adult franchise was I understand compromises in the design of institutions, but how can conflicting principles be accommodated?