REDEFINING DEMOCRACY- ROLE OF THE EC- PART-1

First i would like to discuss what democracy should be, and what our politicians have made a mess out of it, and how it is being misused by all the political parties in India for their vested interests, dividing people on the lines of caste, religion an regions and claiming it, to be the biggest democracy in the world. I am not discussing something new. You all are aware about it. Part-1 of this article is inspired by Mr. B.S. Raghavan of The Hindu, newspaper.

Deploring the chaos and disorder with which the Lok Sabha is smitten and the loss of 40 per cent of the time earmarked for parliamentary business, the Speaker, Mr Somnath Chatterjee, while adjourning the House sine die, exclaimed: “It is extremely disturbing that the highest public forum in this country has almost come to a standstill, which raises many questions about the utility of our system of parliamentary democracy and about its future.” This relates to a session held in 2007.


Winston Churchill, of course, had characterised democracy as ‘the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time’! But that was said in jest by one who was qualified to speak about it, being one of the best practitioners of all that parliamentary democracy stood for.

Abraham Lincoln was profound when he postulated his oft-quoted definition of democracy being ‘the government of the people, by the people and for the people.’ Some wag has since updated it by calling it the government off the people, (to) buy the people and far (from) the people!

At the time India’s founding fathers were framing the Constitution, the models they studied with a great deal of thoroughness were essentially those of Britain (Westminster pattern, with members elected to the legislatures based on adult franchise under the first-past-the-post system) and the US (Presidential form, with strict separation of powers among the co-equal executive, legislative and judicial branches).

They also gave due consideration to electoral systems, such as proportional and list, prevalent in some countries, but after a very exhaustive debate, opted for the Westminster model. What weighed with them in making this choice was the fact that it was already incorporated in the Government of India Act, 1935, and the people had some familiarity with it since it was the basis of the elections held in 1937.

The experience of the last 60 years in working the model in India certainly raises doubts and fears of the kind expressed by Mr Chatterjee.

Shell and Sham

The props and superstructures, and the rites and rituals, making for a simulacrum of democracy, are no doubt in place, but the soul and spirit have long since flown. Indeed, there is evident a deliberate attempt to subvert and pervert the system from top to bottom so that what is left is nothing more than a shell and a sham.

People cannot be blamed if they call into question the utility and future of a democracy in which politics has become the plaything of moneybags, musclemen and mafias, law-breakers are elected as law-makers and occupy Cabinet berths and high Constitutional positions, political and governing classes ride the high horse trampling upon the masses, corruption has become an eagerly embraced mode of life, and accountability and responsiveness are mere words in a dictionary.

How else does one explain the topsy-turvydom by which, year after year, India is ranked high in corruption by the Transparency International and low in human development index by the United Nations Development Programme? Rajiv Gandhi said that our of every rupee of taxpayers’ money allocated for development, only 20 paise worth of benefits actually reached the people. Breathes there the person who is daring enough to say that the situation has changed?

But for the safety valves provided by the judiciary and EC which still commands respect for independence and integrity, and the media which is ferreting out misdeeds and misdemeanours with gusto, and but for the staunch and strict professionalism of the military keeping itself above politics, India perhaps would have gone the same way as Bangladesh, Burma or Pakistan.

In part-2, i shall be discussing what role EC can play to make India an Inclusive democracy, suited for all, educated, uneducated and the rural class. The true democracy, which it should be, suited for Indian conditions.