How government works in IndiaExtendabout 40 min

Build it, test it, take it further

A mini-constitution, a mock Parliament, coalition puzzles, other countries' choices, and where this knowledge leads

Put the whole topic to work: draft and stress-test a mini-constitution, run a mock Parliament, prove a coalition-counting puzzle, compare India's design with other countries', research your own representatives, and meet real careers and open questions this knowledge connects to.

Start at chapter 1

In this part you’ll

Design and stress-test a short constitution for a real group, including its own amendment procedure.
Run a mock bill through introduction, debate, both Houses and assent.
Prove, using a swap argument, that taking the largest parties first minimises the coalition size needed for a majority.
Compare India's parliamentary, federal design with at least one presidential and one unitary example.
Name at least three real careers connected to understanding how government works.

Everything so far has been about India's own system, in detail. This lesson does three different things: it hands you real projects to build, a few harder puzzles to solve, a wider view of how other countries have solved the same three-jobs problem differently, and a look at where this knowledge could actually take you. Some of this goes beyond what a school syllabus expects — that is the point of Extend.

Chapter 01

Project: draft a mini-constitution

Discover started with a class inventing rules for one free hour. This project asks you to do it properly: write an actual short constitution for a real group you belong to — a class, a club, a housing society's children's committee, a sports team.

Seven sections your mini-constitution needs

Step 01Preambleone sentence
Who is making this constitution, and what is it for? Model it on 'WE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA...' but in your own words.
Step 02Membershipwho belongs
Who counts as a member, and how does someone join or leave?
Step 03Rule-makingyour 'legislature'
How are new rules proposed, discussed and agreed? By everyone together, or by chosen representatives?
Step 04Carrying outyour 'executive'
Who actually does the jobs the rules create — collecting subscriptions, booking a ground, keeping records?
Step 05Settling disputesyour 'judiciary'
When two members disagree about what a rule means, or whether it was broken, who decides, and how do they stay fair to both sides?
Step 06Rights and dutiesyour two-way promise
What can every member always expect (a right), and what is every member expected to do (a duty)?
Step 07Amending itharder on purpose
Make changing the constitution itself require more agreement than an ordinary decision — and say exactly how much more.

Example

A filled-in example, to see the shape of it

The Tuesday Football Club's Constitution (a made-up example, to show the shape, not to copy word for word):

Preamble: We, the players of the Tuesday Football Club, form this club to play together fairly and share its costs and duties evenly.

Membership: Anyone who attends three sessions becomes a member; a member who misses six months without notice is considered to have left.

Rule-making: Rules are proposed by any member and agreed by a simple majority of members present at a monthly meeting.

Carrying out: A treasurer, chosen for one season at a time, collects the weekly fee and books the ground; a captain picks the sides each week.

Settling disputes: A dispute about a rule, or about whether it was broken, is heard by three members chosen by lot who were not involved in the dispute, and their decision is final for that match.

Rights and duties: Every member may play in at least one match a month if they attend; every member must pay the weekly fee on time and help carry equipment on a rotating basis.

Amending it: Changing this constitution needs two-thirds of all members, not just those present, to agree — noticeably harder than an ordinary rule change.

Notice this fits comfortably on one page and still answers every hard question a real dispute could raise.

Chapter 02

Project: run a mock Parliament

This project needs at least eight participants (more is better) and turns the bill-to-Act process from Understand into something you actually run, start to finish.

How to run it in one session

Step 01Pick a real, small, non-partisan issue5 min
Something with no party politics attached: a school uniform rule, a park's opening hours, a rule about mobile phones in a shared space.
Step 02Split into two Houses2 min
Uneven numbers are fine and realistic — the Lok Sabha group can simply be bigger.
Step 03Draft a one-paragraph bill10 min
Whoever proposes it becomes its sponsor and introduces it to their own House first.
Step 04Debate and amend it10 min
Encourage at least one genuine amendment; a bill that survives completely unchanged rarely reflects real debate.
Step 05Vote in the first House2 min
A simple show-of-hands majority passes it there.
Step 06Send it to the second House10 min
They may pass it as is, amend it, or reject it. If they reject it, try a mini 'joint sitting': everyone votes together, simple majority decides.
Step 07Assent1 min
One participant plays the President and either assents or, once only, sends it back for reconsideration.

Lab

Use the bill track alongside your live mock Parliament to check you have not skipped a required stage.

An idea only becomes law after a long journey. Step through it.

Step 1 of 7 · First reading

Introduction

A minister or any MP asks the House for leave to introduce the bill. Its title and aims are read out; there is no debate yet. Most bills start in either House — money bills can only start in the Lok Sabha.

What if a House says no?

If one House passes an ordinary bill and the other rejects it, or they cannot agree on the changes, or more than six months go by, the President may call a joint sitting of both Houses. Everyone votes together, and a simple majority of those present decides. The Lok Sabha has many more members than the Rajya Sabha, so its view usually wins.

A money bill is different: it can only start in the Lok Sabha, and the Rajya Sabha may only suggest changes and must send it back within 14 days. The Lok Sabha can accept those suggestions or ignore them.

Round 1 / 8★ 0 ptsBest: 0

Ready for a few questions?

Text version of this activity

Run this lab's bill mode side by side with the mock Parliament project as a checklist: it shows every required stage — introduction, committee, first-House vote, second-House vote, optional joint sitting, assent — and will not let a bill reach 'Act' status if a stage was skipped. The branches mode is useful afterwards, to sort what your group actually did (debating = legislature, running the vote count = executive-like administration, settling the one dispute you probably had = judiciary-like) back onto the three-organs model.

Need a different angle?

Chapter 03

Puzzle: the fewest parties for a majority

Here is a genuine reasoning puzzle, the kind that shows up in olympiad-style problem sets. Five parties win these Lok Sabha seat counts: 180, 150, 90, 70, 53 (check: they add to 543). No party has a majority alone. What is the smallest number of these parties that can combine to reach 272 seats or more?

Worked example

0 / 5 steps shown

Solving it by taking the biggest first

Try combining the largest parties first and see how quickly you reach 272.

Need a different angle?

Aha

Why 'biggest first' really is the best strategy here

This is worth proving properly, not just checking on one example. Suppose some combination of k parties reaches 272 seats. Now replace any party in that combination with a larger party not already used — the new total can only be the same or bigger, so it still reaches 272, using the same number of parties. Repeating this swap, you can always turn any successful combination of k parties into one made of the k largest parties overall, without ever making the total smaller. So if any combination of k parties works, the k largest parties working together also work. That means the smallest k that works at all is found by trying the largest parties first, exactly as the worked example did. This kind of swap argument is a standard tool in olympiad combinatorics, and it applies here without any change.

Try it

Worked example

0 / 4 steps shown

The same puzzle with seven parties

Seven parties win 140, 120, 95, 80, 60, 30, 18 seats (check: they add to 543). What is the smallest number of parties needed for a majority of 272?

Reflect

Invent your own set of five party seat totals that add to 543, designed so that the answer to 'fewest parties for a majority' is 3, not 1 or 2. Show your totals and the arithmetic that proves 3 is really the smallest number that works.

This stays on this page only. It isn’t saved or sent anywhere.

Chapter 04

Puzzle: how many coalitions are even possible?

A different kind of question: not "what is the smallest coalition", but "how many different coalitions of a given size could even be formed?" This is a counting (combinatorics) problem.

Worked example

0 / 4 steps shown

Counting two-party combinations from five parties

From 5 parties, how many different ways can you choose 2 of them to team up (ignoring which one you pick first)?

Need a different angle?

Try it

Lab

Apply mean and range to the five-party seat data from the puzzles in this chapter.

Five party seat totals

Round 1 / 1★ 0 ptsBest: 0

Challenge 1Find the mean seat total across the five parties.

Target: mean = 108.6. Right now the mean is 108.6. Add or remove dots below — it checks as you go.

Tap the number line to add a value; tap a dot to remove it. Dashed long line = mean (●), dotted line = median (▲).

The values (5)

Mean (share it out equally)108.6

sum ÷ count = 543 ÷ 5 = 108.6

Median (the middle value)90

537090150180

5 values (odd), so the middle one — number 3 in order — is the median.

Mode (most common)No mode

Every value appears only once. The usual convention: when nothing repeats, we say there is no mode.

Range (spread)127

max − min = 180 − 53 = 127

Text version of this activity

The same five seat totals from the coalition puzzles — 180, 150, 90, 70, 53 — loaded as an editable data set. The mean challenge is a straightforward application of the data-handling skill: finding the mean gives about 108.6, which is itself worth noticing is close to none of the actual seat totals — only two of the five parties (180 and 150) sit above it, a reminder that the mean of a lopsided data set is not "typical" of most of the values in it.

Need a different angle?

Chapter 05

Wider view: other ways to build a government

India's specific choices — a parliamentary system, a federal Union with States, first-past-the-post elections — are not the only ways a country can organise itself. Seeing a few real alternatives makes India's own choices sharper, by contrast.

TableParliamentary vs presidential systems: two ways to link the executive to the legislature
Aspect	Parliamentary (India, UK)	Presidential (USA, Brazil)
Head of government chosen by	The legislature's majority	A separate, direct election of their own
Can the legislature remove the head of government mid-term?	Yes, by a no-confidence vote	Not simply by losing a vote of confidence; removal is a rare, difficult process
Are the executive's members also legislators?	Usually yes — ministers are typically also MPs	Usually no — the executive and legislature are staffed by different people
Typical strength	Executive and legislature usually move together, since the executive needs the legislature's continued confidence	Clear separation of personnel between the two branches
Typical weakness	A government can fall between elections if it loses its majority	The executive and legislature can be controlled by different, opposed groups and struggle to agree on anything

TableFederal vs unitary states: two ways to share power geographically
Aspect	Federal (India, USA, Germany)	Unitary (UK, France, Japan)
Where does power over regions come from?	The Constitution itself divides power between the centre and regions	The central government delegates power to regions, and can in principle redesign that delegation
Can a region's core powers be removed by the centre alone?	Not easily — that usually needs the amendment procedure and often the regions' own consent	More easily, since regional power derives from the centre in the first place
Example of a genuinely federal feature	India's Seventh Schedule fixes the States' own subjects in the Constitution itself	A UK government can, by ordinary Act of Parliament, restructure how much power devolved administrations hold

Explore

Four real countries, four different combinations

Pick a country to see which choices it made on each of the two questions above.

Parliamentary
→
Federal
→
First-past-the-post

A parliamentary, federal republic: the Prime Minister needs the Lok Sabha's confidence, States have their own constitutionally fixed powers, and Lok Sabha seats are won by first-past-the-post.

Lab

Fix the four countries from the explorer above to their actual combination of design choices.

Match each country to the combination of system choices it actually made.

4 pairs are hiding in two mixed-up columns. Pick one from each side to join them.

Text version of this activity

A short four-pair matching game rehearsing the explorer: India (parliamentary, federal, first-past-the-post), the United Kingdom (parliamentary, unitary with devolution, first-past-the- post), the United States (presidential, federal) and Switzerland (a collective seven-member executive, federal, proportional representation) — reinforcing that these are independent design choices that can combine in more than one way.

Related to

Exploration: reasons and consequences

Many of today's federal and parliamentary systems, including India's, took shape partly in reaction to how colonial rule had organised power before independence.

Chapter 06

How India's own map has changed

Deepen's Chapter 1 mentioned that forming a new state needs only a simple majority — the easiest of the Constitution's three difficulty levels for change, under Article 3. This is worth seeing in action: India's internal map has genuinely changed several times since 1950, entirely through this ordinary lawmaking process, not through the harder amendment procedure.

The map being redrawn, entirely by ordinary law

1956
States Reorganisation Act States were substantially redrawn along linguistic lines, following the recommendations of a States Reorganisation Commission — the biggest single reshaping of the internal map.
2000
Three new states in one year Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Uttarakhand were carved out of larger existing states, each by its own Act of Parliament.
2014
Telangana Telangana was formed out of Andhra Pradesh, the most recent creation of an entirely new state.

States today: 28As of the most recent reorganisation.
Union Territories today: 8Including Delhi and Puducherry, which have their own elected legislatures for many subjects.
Newest state: Telangana (2014)Formed out of Andhra Pradesh by an ordinary Act of Parliament.
Hardest thing to change: Basic structureSee Deepen: not even a special majority can remove it, per the 1973 Kesavananda Bharati case.

TableA few of the states created since 1956, and what they were carved from
New state	Year	Carved from
Nagaland	1963	Assam
Haryana	1966	Punjab
Chhattisgarh	2000	Madhya Pradesh
Uttarakhand	2000	Uttar Pradesh
Jharkhand	2000	Bihar
Telangana	2014	Andhra Pradesh

Reflect

Pick one state from the table above (or research one not listed) and find one specific, sourced reason commonly given for why it was formed — language, distance from the existing state capital, a distinct regional identity, or something else. Write two or three sentences citing what you found, without taking a side on whether the change was a good idea.

This stays on this page only. It isn’t saved or sent anywhere.

Try it

Chapter 07

Where this knowledge could take you

Understanding how government actually works is not only exam knowledge. It is also the starting point for several real careers and forms of public life, at every level from a village to the whole country.

TableSome paths connected to this topic
Path	How people usually get there	What they actually do
Civil services (IAS, IPS, IFS and more)	The Union Public Service Commission's open competitive examination	Run districts and departments, implement policy, stay in post across a change of government
Judicial service	A law degree, then either judicial service examinations (for lower courts) or years of practice before elevation to a High Court	Decide cases, interpret the law, and, at the higher levels, review laws against the Constitution
Legislative research analyst	Usually a postgraduate degree in law, economics, public policy or a related field	Study bills and budgets in detail and publish plain-language explainers and analysis for MPs, journalists and the public — the kind of work behind organisations like PRS Legislative Research
Parliamentary or political journalism	A journalism qualification and, often, years covering other beats first	Report on Parliament's sittings, committee work and elections so the public can follow what their representatives are doing
Elected local representative (ward councillor, sarpanch, MLA, MP)	Standing for election and winning it — no qualification exam required	Represent an area's people directly, from a single ward to the whole country
Election administration	Government service, often within the civil service, seconded to election duties	Run polling stations, manage electoral rolls, and organise one of the largest logistical exercises in the world
Civic technology and RTI-based work	Varied entry points — law, journalism, computer science, or simply sustained practice	Use the Right to Information Act and public data to hold institutions accountable and make government information easier for ordinary people to use

Civil services exam: Once a yearThe UPSC's combined examination for the IAS, IPS, IFS and other central services is held annually and open to any eligible citizen who applies.
Judicial service: State-wiseEach state runs its own judicial service examination for entry-level judges in its subordinate courts.
No exam needed: Elected officeStanding for panchayat, municipal, assembly or Lok Sabha election needs no qualification exam — only eligibility under election law.
RTI fee: ₹10The tiny cost of the single most-used tool in citizen-led accountability work.

Reflect

Pick one path from the table that surprised you or that you had not thought of before. Write two or three sentences on what about it seems interesting, and one question you would want to ask someone who actually does that job.

This stays on this page only. It isn’t saved or sent anywhere.

Chapter 08

Project: research your own representatives

Everything in this topic has been about institutions in general. This project asks you to find out about the specific people and offices that actually represent you, right now.

A research project, done properly

Step 01Find your constituencyLS and assembly seat
Most Election Commission and state election websites let you search by address or locality.
Step 02Name your representativesMP, MLA, and local
Your Lok Sabha MP, your state MLA, and your ward councillor or sarpanch — three different people, at three different levels.
Step 03Find one thing each has actually donea real, checkable fact
A bill an MP has spoken on or a committee they sit on (PRS's tracking is useful here), an MLA's work in the state assembly, or a specific local project your ward councillor or panchayat has completed.
Step 04Check your own constituency's basic numberssize and turnout
How many electors does your constituency have, and what was its turnout at the last election you can find data for?
Step 05Write it up as a one-page profileno opinions, just facts
State only what you can point to a specific source for. This is a research skill, not a chance to state a preference.

Lab

Sort six research findings by which level of representative they actually belong to, before writing your own profile.

Sort these research findings by which representative they are actually about.

6 cards, 3 bins. Tap a card, then tap its bin. You can also drag, or press a bin’s number key.

Text version of this activity

A three-bin sort — MP, MLA, local representative — using six example research findings, to rehearse exactly the skill this project needs: correctly attributing an action to the right representative and the right level of government, rather than lumping "politician" into one category.

Chapter 09

Open questions worth sitting with

TableWhere each open question connects back in this topic
Open question	Connects back to
Voting method trade-offs	Investigate: seat share vs vote share
The seat freeze and equal vote weight	Investigate: how equal is one vote's weight?
Court capacity vs wider access	Deepen: public interest litigation
Judicial appointments and accountability	Deepen: the collegium
Local government's own revenue	Understand: panchayati raj and urban bodies

Some questions in this topic do not have one settled answer — not because nobody has thought about them, but because they involve real trade-offs between things that are all worth having. These are presented as questions to think about, not positions to adopt.

Think about it

Open questions for curious learners

Pick one and think it through, or discuss it with someone else — there is no single correct answer expected here.

If a voting method could reduce the seat-versus-vote gap you tested in Investigate, but would also make it harder to form a stable, single-party government, how would you decide whether the trade-off is worth it?
The seat freeze protects States from losing seats after slowing their population growth, but it also means one MP can represent very different numbers of people in different states over time. Can you design a rule that keeps both of those goals better balanced than the current freeze does?
Public interest litigation widened who can approach a court, but courts still have limited time and judges. If you had to choose between more judges, faster procedures, or more courts, which would you prioritise, and why?
The collegium lets judges recommend judges, protecting independence from the executive, at the cost of an appointing body that answers to no elected institution. Can you design an alternative that keeps independence but adds more accountability, without recreating the problem it solves?
Panchayats and municipalities now have constitutional status, but many still depend heavily on funds passed down from the State or Union rather than their own local revenue. What would it take for a gram panchayat to raise most of its own budget locally, and what would be the trade-offs of that?

Reflect

Choose one open question from the list above and write a short "steelman" — the strongest, fairest version of an answer you personally would NOT choose — before writing the answer you actually prefer. Explaining the other side well, in its own best form, is a genuinely difficult and valuable skill, and it is different from merely disagreeing with it.

This stays on this page only. It isn’t saved or sent anywhere.

Chapter 10

Putting the whole topic together

Five layers ago, this topic started in a school hall with thirty children and no rules. It ends here, with you able to draft a working mini-constitution, run a mock Parliament properly, prove a combinatorics claim about coalitions, compare India's choices with three other countries', and name a real career built on exactly this knowledge.

The three jobs from Discover — make the rules, carry them out, settle disputes about them — have not changed at all. What has changed is how much detail you can now put underneath each one, and how much of it you can check yourself, in Python or on paper, rather than taking on trust.

Words to know

All maths vocabulary →

New words in this layer

parliamentary system: A system where the head of government is chosen by, and answerable to, the legislature's confidence.; Example: India and the UK both use parliamentary systems.
presidential system: A system where the head of government is elected separately from the legislature and is not simply removable by losing its confidence.; Example: The USA uses a presidential system.
unitary state: A country where regional power is delegated by the central government rather than fixed by the constitution itself.; Example: The UK is a unitary state with devolved administrations.
combination (nCr): A way of counting how many groups of a given size can be chosen from a larger set, when order does not matter.; Example: 5 choose 2 gives 10 possible two-party pairings.
greedy strategy: Solving a problem by always taking the best available option at each step; sometimes provably optimal, as in the coalition-size puzzle.; Example: Taking the largest parties first gives the fewest parties needed for a majority.
Article 3: The constitutional provision letting Parliament form or reshape a state by a simple-majority law, after seeking (but not needing to follow) the affected state legislature's views.; Example: Telangana was formed in 2014 using Article 3.

Where this comes from

Sources

States Reorganisation Act, 1956 (opens another website) — Wikipediaawaiting check
Supports the 1956 linguistic reorganisation of states, the later creation of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Uttarakhand in 2000 and Telangana in 2014, and Article 3's simple-majority procedure for Parliament to form or reshape a state.
Bill Track: bills in Parliament (opens another website) — PRS Legislative Researchawaiting check
Supports the life of a bill: introduction, referral to a committee, passage by both Houses, assent, and the difference between a bill and an Act.
Parliament Track: sittings, question hour and committees (opens another website) — PRS Legislative Researchawaiting check
Supports how Parliament actually runs: sessions, sittings, Question Hour, Zero Hour, departmentally related standing committees and the Budget session.
Election Commission of India (opens another website) — Election Commission of Indiaawaiting check
Supports the Election Commission's role, electoral rolls, the model code of conduct, EVMs with VVPAT, NOTA, and turnout statistics for Lok Sabha general elections.
Union Public Service Commission (opens another website) — Union Public Service Commission, Government of Indiaawaiting check
Supports the permanent civil service: recruitment by open, independent examination to the All India Services and Central Civil Services, and that civil servants stay in post across a change of government.
Supreme Court of India (opens another website) — Supreme Court of Indiaawaiting check
Supports the Supreme Court's role as the final court of appeal and the guardian of the Constitution, and its power of judicial review.
Panchayati raj (opens another website) — Wikipediaawaiting check
Supports the three-tier panchayati raj structure, the 73rd and 74th Amendments of 1992-93 giving it constitutional status, and one-third reservation of seats and chairperson posts for women.
Right to Information: online RTI portal (opens another website) — Department of Personnel and Training, Government of Indiaawaiting check
Supports the Right to Information Act, 2005: who can ask, the fee, the 30-day reply period and the 48-hour period where life or liberty is concerned.
The Constitution of India (as on 1 May 2024) (opens another website) — Legislative Department, Ministry of Law and Justice, Government of Indiaawaiting check
The full official text. Supports the Preamble wording, adoption on 26 November 1949, Articles 80, 81, 83, 100(3), 108, 110, 111, 112, 368 and 326, the Fundamental Rights and Duties, Parts IX and IXA on panchayats and municipalities, and the Seventh Schedule.

Keep this

Cheat sheet

A mini-constitution needs rule-making, carrying-out and dispute-settling sections, rights and duties, and an amendment procedure that is deliberately harder than everyday decisions.
A mock Parliament should include introduction, debate and amendment, a vote in each House, a joint-sitting option for genuine deadlock, and a real assent step.
Fewest parties for a majority: take the largest parties first — a swap argument proves this greedy strategy is always optimal for minimising the count.
Counting coalitions: the number of ways to choose r parties from n, when order does not matter, is n choose r.
Parliamentary vs presidential, federal vs unitary are two independent design choices; India is parliamentary and federal, and neither combination is simply 'better' than the alternatives.
India's own map has changed repeatedly through Article 3's simple-majority procedure — the easiest kind of constitutional change, not the hardest — including 1956's linguistic reorganisation and three new states created in 2000 alone.
Real careers connected to this topic include the civil services, the judiciary, legislative research, parliamentary journalism, elected office at every level, election administration and RTI-based civic work.
Open questions — on voting methods, the seat freeze, court capacity, judicial appointments and local government finance — are genuinely unsettled trade-offs, not questions this lesson takes a side on.

End of Extend

What you just read

Design and stress-test a short constitution for a real group, including its own amendment procedure.
Run a mock bill through introduction, debate, both Houses and assent.
Prove, using a swap argument, that taking the largest parties first minimises the coalition size needed for a majority.
Compare India's parliamentary, federal design with at least one presidential and one unitary example.
Name at least three real careers connected to understanding how government works.

The web

Explore a connection

Builds on
Exploration: reasons and consequences
The empires that grew out of the voyages shaped the constitution and the freedoms India wrote for itself afterwards.
Used inanother area
Data handling
A census, an election result and a budget are all data: counted, summarised and argued over.
Used inanother area
Number system
Election results and budgets are read in lakhs and crores — place value with real consequences.

Want to save topics or ask for new ones? Invited families can connect a learning device. Everything here stays free to read without signing in.

Revision 1 · release preview-7e1cbbcc4f · accepted 20/09/2026

Seven sections your mini-constitution needs

How to run it in one session

Solving it by taking the biggest first

The same puzzle with seven parties

Counting two-party combinations from five parties

The values (5)

Four real countries, four different combinations

The map being redrawn, entirely by ordinary law

A research project, done properly

New words in this layer

Sources

Check the wider picture

Cheat sheet

What you just read

Explore a connection