A more serious limitation of Indian
parliamentary democracy is seen in the cases of failure of representative
Government, leading to authoritarian rule.
-
S.S.Tiwana
(1994)
Democracy is a political system where the subjects take part
in law making for the country. This form of governance evolved in ancient Greece
as early as 508 BCE. Democracy became a popular form of governance after French
Revolution. In the 20th century, most of the countries colonized by
Europeans got freedom and preferred to adopt democratic from of political
system.
The key elements of democracy are: involvement of the citizen
in decision making, a system of representation, rule by law and equality freedom
and liberty among citizens. There may be
variations in every country, but the key factors would be
India got its freedom in 1947 from British, but then it was
fragmented into more than 500 smaller states ruled by kings. Along with the
freedom movement, the freedom fighters also fed nationalism and unified the
people of India. India was united into one country and the intellectuals in the
freedom movement decided to have democratic form of governance.
Democracy in Pre-Independent India
Indian councils Act of 1861, involved select 3 Indians (two
of them being Kings) in the process of law making. The Government of India Act
of 1919 gave representation based religious community, property ownership, tax
payment education. In 1928, Motilal Nehru advocated universal adult franchise. The
Government of India Act of 1935 gave more representation to different
categories and about 10% of the total population got franchise rights.
After independence, India gave full adult franchise rights
to everyone of age above 21, and the age was reduced to 18 years later through
61st constitution amendment Act, 1988.
Elections and Governments in Post-Independent India
Indians voted for Indian National Congress until euphoria of
Indian Independence lastedtill the 1971 general elections. The Emergency imposed
between 1975 and 1977, ended the majority rule and extended political plurality
in the Indian political ecology. Table 1, shows the nature of governments ruled
India and it can be seen that the single party dominance by the Indian National
Congress slowly declined since 1977 elections. The sympathy wave caused by the
death of Ms. Indira Gandhi swept the 1984 election in favor of the Indian
National Congress. This election saw 49.16% of vote in favor of the government,
the highest in all the general elections in India.
|
Sl. No.
|
General Election
|
Party Ruled
|
Nature of Government
|
|
1.
|
1951-52
|
Indian
National Congress
|
Majority Rule
|
|
2.
|
1957
|
Indian
National Congress
|
Majority Rule
|
|
3.
|
1962
|
Indian
National Congress
|
Majority Rule
|
|
4.
|
1967
|
Indian
National Congress
|
Majority Rule
|
|
5.
|
1971
|
Indian
National Congress
|
Majority Rule
|
|
6.
|
1977
|
Janatha Party
|
Majority Rule
|
|
7.
|
1980
|
Indian
National Congress
|
Majority Rule
|
|
8.
|
1984
|
Indian
National Congress
|
Majority Rule
|
|
9.
|
1989
|
National
Front coalition(led by Janata Dal)
|
Coalition
Rule
|
|
10.
|
1991
|
Indian
National Congress
|
Minority Rule
|
|
11.
|
1996
|
Bharatiya Janata
Party with allies
|
Minority Rule
|
|
United Front
|
Coalition
Rule
|
|
12.
|
1998
|
Bharatiya Janata Party with allies
|
Minority Rule
|
|
13.
|
1999
|
National Democratic Alliance (led by Bharatiya Janata Party)
|
Coalition
Rule
|
|
14.
|
2004
|
United Progressive Alliance led by Indian National Congress
|
Coalition
Rule
|
|
15.
|
2009
|
United Progressive Alliance led by Indian National Congress
|
Coalition
Rule
|
|
16.
|
2014
|
National Democratic Alliance led by Bharatiya Janata Party
|
Coalition
Rule
|
|
17.
|
2019
|
National Democratic Alliance led by Bharatiya Janata Party
|
Coalition Rule
|
Table 1.
General Elections and Governments in Independent India
In 1967, Tamilnadu saw the development of regionalism and
the raise of Dravidian party. Slowly, this regionalism spread across different
states in India. The national political parties had to react to this reality
and were forced to align with regional parties. From majority rule, India
accepted the change and adapted to coalition rule with common minimum program
as the philosophy to rule the country. For a government to be successful, the
rulers need to care the people by removing any social disparity and economic
inequality and provide protection through a transparent legal system and
transparency of their operations through all media.
Major Problems Caused by Democracy
Capitalism has always survived along with democracy, long
before the period of Adam Smith. During early democracy, law making was
influenced by rich families, capitalism widened economic inequality either by
class or caste. With the current democracy, though the constitution assures
social equality, the gap between the rich and poor and the elite and the
underprivileged keeps widening.
Corruption is yet another problem that lives with democracy.
The elected government and the officers of the government always have secret
alliances which end up as suffering for the common people. The legal rights and
human rights are forced to be purchased by bribing and those rights remain the
rights of the privileged.
Declining Democratic Value in Twenty First Century India
As mentioned in Table 1, slowly the rule by a party by
majority representation deteriorated and moved towards coalition form of
government. The Economic Index compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit
(EIU), places India in 51st position among the 167 countries
surveyed for the year 2019; in the previous year India was in 41st
position. This survey calls India as “Flawed Democracy” for reasons such as
suppression of political oppositions and public criticism, along with poor governance
issues.
The flawed democracy in India is the root cause of several
social issues, a glimpse of such social problems, both prevailing and emerging,
are described in brief in the following passages. Unfortunately, these decaying
of democracy began with the emergence of globalization of the economy after
signing the agreement with WTO (World Trade Organization) in 1995. The early
governments of 1990s destroyed the backbone India, Education by privatizing it.
The later governments nourished fundamentalism and promotes fascism. By
centralizing the power of governance, federalism and the regional flavor of the
cultural diversity are being crushed beyond reorganization. Amidst several
protest Article 370, which gave special status to Kashmir was revoked in August,
2019. And then the democratically elected government turned into an
authoritarian government.
The Pandemic of 2020 Hitting Indian Democracy
India is always called as the world’s largest democracy
during every general election. Due the plurality of culture, food, language and
geographical divisions, India is had pride in “Unity in Diversity”. The NDA
government took all efforts in destroying the diversity with its “One India”
philosophy. And one day in 2020 WHO (World Health Organization) announced a
pandemic and informed “Social Distance” as the order of the day. The present
government social distanced with Indian democracy and opened the Pandora’s Box
of social problems.The government advised people to be opportunistic and
utilize maximum advantage of the pandemic, and it did it in passing as many as
bills as possible to the advantage of the corporates. Sooner, common people
will realize the social problems when the Acts are enforced as Law.
a.
Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) 2020: The
law is passed to make way to industrialize India, welcoming both Indian and
foreign investors. Times of India
reported, “The main problem here is that there is no scope for public complaint
meaning we the public cannot take actions”or protest against the damage to the
environment or the plight of the people who are supposed to be relocated
because of the proposed project.
The Wire report titled “EIA Legitimised Environmental Destruction.
Now, Govt ‘Renovates’ it for the Worst”, and informed that “They have also
given harmful and toxic industrial processes the license to ruin workers lives
and contaminate entire landscapes. Even if these impacts are assessed through
studies done as part of EIA procedures, once the projects start operations,
these impacts are written off as the costs of economic growth.”
The effect would be irreversible
collapse of the society with migration, poverty, curruption and social unrest.
b.
New Educational Policy (NEP) 2020: Ever since Liberalization,
Privatization, and Globalization hit India, education is seen as Human Capital.
The NEP chaired by Kasturirangan was engineered with the aims to transform
India's education system by 2030.People’s
Review reported that NEP was capitalistic plan “to tailor India’s education
system according to the diktats of the World Bank, the International Monetary
Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organization (WTO)” as “WTO wants
commodification of [Indian] education” and end the public education. The
rationale is simple, as more the customers more the profit. The report further
states that, “NEP 2020 will not only deprive the students of marginalised
classes and communities a right to education, as enshrined in the Indian
constitution, it will also make education an exclusive right of the upper-caste
elites and urban middle class.”
NEP 2020 focuses on Social and
Emotional Learning (SEL). Deccan Herald reported
that, “India has approximately 160 million children in poverty and experiencing
adversity on a daily basis,” and advised that, “… our education system should
be designed not just to prepare our children for the future but to first help
them overcome the adverse impact of adversity.”
As part of “One India” philosophy
of the present government, we cannot rule out the possibility of rewriting
history with imaginations found in fictions of the Vedic past as history and
science.
The impact of the implementation
of NEP 2020 will leave education as a dream for majority of the population,
which will again lead to social problems like widening economic inequality,
social inequality and unemployment.
Before
concluding, among several other bills passed while “social distancing”, there
are three farm bills (a. The Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and
Facilitation) Bill, 2020; b. The Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement
on Prices Assurance and Farm Services Bill, 2020; and c. The Essential
Commodities (Amendment) Bill, 2020) and one labour bill (The Industrial
Relations Code, 2020) that are intended to disadvantage and criminalize farmers
and working class and benefit the
corporate.The intrusion of select corporate in the functioning of the
government is a great social concern. Corporates are powerful to commoditize
the voice of the representative in the parliamentary democracy, considering the
cost involved in Indian election.
a.
The real problem is the representative
democracy, where the representation is diluted in the vast population of the
country. In 1951, one Member of Parliament represented 3.4 lakh voters, where
as in 2014 the representation was diminished for 16 lakh voters in average.
Under representation of people’s voice in the government definitely leads to
authoritarian government, which suppresses the underprivileged people and converting
them into commodity.
b.
India is too big and diverse to have direct
democracy as in Switzerland; dreaming for a direct democracy is tremendously
satisfying as if envisaging a utopian India. Sooner, with the help of
technology if a digital democracy is evolved for a total participatory
democracy at least on key issues, that will be a breather for the citizens; but
corporates will soon become hackers.
c.
The only possible solution to save the only
Earth that has life and save Mars from realtors like Elon Musk, is ending
Capitalism; if Earth and Mars are not saved, at least India would be saved.
Swami Vivekananda said, “Arise, awake, and stop not till the
goal is reached!”
John Milton said, “Awake, arise or be for ever fall'n.”
Both
statements are extremely relevant and stimulating in the time and place we live.
Endnote: This article is written for an assignment for class 10 Economics in a CBSE School
