Do you remember the story of the Office Memorandum with which we started this chapter? We found out that the person who signed the document did not take this decision. He was only executing the policy decision taken by someone else. We noted the role of the Prime Minister in taking that decision. But we also know that he could not have taken that decision if he did not have support from the Lok Sabha. In that sense he was only executing the wishes of the Parliament.
Thus, at different levels of any government we find functionaries who take day-to-day decisions but do not exercise supreme power on behalf of the people. All those functionaries are collectively known as the executive. They are called executive because they are in charge of the ‘execution’ of the policies of the government. Thus, when we talk about the government’ we usually mean the executive. Language: English