DEMOCRACY IN INDIA

   

Democracy in India:

                                         Aachal Burande

                “Democracy” the word itself is union of two words i.e. ‘demos’ and ‘cracy’. Demos mean people & cracy indicates the power. Democracy originated in Athens, Greek in 150 B.C. In simple words, people have all power. By Abraham Lincoln, ‘Democracy is the government by the people, for the people and to the people’. It is said that, democracy is the best form of government than dictatorship or monarchy. It is the unique form of government which involves citizens of nation in the process of nation building. This process is bit slowly but it is the best way of government which never does mistake or wrong for long period because of opposition parties. Aristotle, the father of political science said that, democracy is the perverted form of government. Democracy has different types such political democracy, social democracy & economic democracy.

                 

   Indian democracy is one of the biggest democracy in the world. It ranks 7^th in the world largest democracy. When we talk about democracy in India, two things are necessary to keep it alive. One is constitution or rule book which should be compulsorily mandate for all citizens & other is democratic way of elections after periodic time. After the colonial rule before independence, Westminster form of government was undoubtedly better suited to India. It pretends democratic system of parliamentary government. Parliamentary government is the government in which prime minister is the head of the government and not the state (ex. India). On the other hand, in presidential government president is head of both government and state (ex. USA). Indian constitution is the great example of globalization which implies the soul of Indian democracy. Article 19 to article 22 is the backbone of democracy. It specially includes fundamental rights for citizens to survive power of people in democracy. Preamble of constitution highlights many terminologies which saved instability in nation. The principle of sovereignty implies that the supreme power of state, secularism is no official religion of nation & everyone is free to accept any religion, republic is directly elected of head of state i.e. president, etc. It also mentions the 3 principles of democracy. Liberty, Equality & Fraternity are the principles, on which democracy is alive in the country having variety of religion, caste, language, region & even culture. Liberty indicates the same law for all people. Equality mandatory in all streams & fraternity is a term which says that every Indian is brother or sister of each other. India had accepted “VASUDHAIVA KUTUMBAKAM”. It implies whole nation, one family. There are four pillars of Indian democracy: Judiciary, Bureaucracy, Legislature & media. These 4 pillars are meant to be independent from each other. From last few years, it is seen that government i.e. legislature is being interrupted in other 3 pillars. The historical event press conference held in January by senior most judges of Supreme Court told that Indian Democracy is in danger. Something wrong happening in judiciary system and media could not even escape from this. This incident is big shocked to democracy. 

                Elections are the main part of democracy. In India, after every five years elections are conducted. Elections held in India are multiparty election system. Multiparty election system is good for democracy. It includes many parties which has probability to win the elections. However in USA, there are only two parties and they came into power one after other & in China there is influence of only one party which is Communist party of China. These are not totally agrees with terms of democracy. Here people don’t have enough freedom to choose their representative. The conduction of free & fair elections with acceptance of Universal Franchise is to be said a success of elections in democracy. India is the only one country where every citizen got equal rights to vote (one vote, one value) from its first democratic elections which were held in 1952. Earlier, congress use to come in power by indicating issues as democratization of politics, Indira Gandhi came up with slogan “Eradicate poverty” in 1971 but still India has crisis of poverty in 2018 too. At the time of emergency in 1975-1977, PM Indira Gandhi misused the power of article 365 which had a stigma on democracy. On the other hand, BJP fights elections on basis of casteism, communalism, regionalism, poverty, terrorism, corruption & unemployment.

                     There lot many crisis in front of Indian democracy such as national integration, malnutrition, identity politics, penetration, legitimacy, caste system, linguistic problem, poverty, illiteracy, health related issues, unemployment, lack of occupation adoption, population explosion, socio-economic inequality, criminalization of politics, nepotism, etc. To overcome these issues is the great task in front democracy. But India will successfully overcome these problems and will be a great democracy forever.