Saturday, December 21, 2013

An Experiment With Democracy

The democratic power of India creates its distinction and many countries approach India to study democracy and how it works. India is not only the world’s largest democracy but has shown its robustness in unifying the countless differentiation that exists in the country in the name of religion, caste, language, region, beliefs and idiosyncrasies.

A successful democracy needs to weed out the archaic concepts and introduce the new to fulfill the demands of the people. The system that has been created in the long time needs an overhauling to benefit its stakeholders. People are the owner of the country and of its resources and they choose some people amongst them for its governance which constitutes a ruling party or the government. All is well so far, the ideal version of democracy is in place and people are happy as they are ruling their own country. But the satisfaction goes to an end when the representatives become the owner of the country and people, helplessly, have to look at them for their shares. People, through the constitution of India, give power to their representatives to work effectively for them but distribution of resources are based on favouratism and cronyism and this is called ‘Corruption’.

Such type of system is all prevalent in the country where people are not participating in the decision-making for the country and they are left with agitations. When people are reminded of their responsibility in casting their vote and sit back to see the drama in the parliament, they feel cheated on the name of democracy.

Something needs to be change, people have to be asked their wishes from time to time; direct democracy is required where people’s participation is encouraged. Atleast something is to be experimented. For a big country like India, direct democracy seems impossible but it can be encouraged and experimented in small parts and find out the ways that how it can be organized. It is easy to say, if people don’t cast vote then they don’t have the right to ask any question but when they feel themselves participative they surely come forward. In direct democracy citizens can oppose any law legislated by their representatives or ask for a referendum to be hold.

Countries, like Switzerland, can be studied where direct democracy exists and working successfully and what we can adopt from them to make it applicable in India. It is first time in the history of India when people are asked their opinion after the elections are over. The step AAP (Aam Admi Party) has taken can be seen with the spectacles of doubt and which is not wrong; it may be their drama for the already accepted decision of forming the government or they are showing that they are different from the current political parties. Democracy gives the right to its citizens to doubt the intentions of any political party but that doubt should not block our vision so that we would not see something that is good for them.

India’s position at 94 in the world’s corruption index means that there are 93 countries in the world that have less corruption than us, we need to find out where they are good at and some political parties have to take the initiative and experiment in India to maintain the sanctity of the Indian democracy.

1 comment:

Serridhar S Iy said...

Common Man has some responsibility on his side. First, come what may, he needs to vote. Second, as you rightly pointed out, he should have a direct say in the ward, where he or she lives. Public should have power to audit all the works carried out at his ward by MLA or MP representing them. In this way, we can project a Democratic way of living...Else it is just hollow word to use...