Abraham Lincoln, the famous President of the USA, has called democracy “government of the people, by the people and for the people.” India has a parliamentary form of government. As such, it has a multiparty system. It has two houses of legislature which are known as the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha. The former is the lower and the latter is the upper house.
The majority party rules the country as long as it enjoys the confidence of the lower house which is elected by the people through a direct general election. There are certain conditions necessary for the success of democracy in a country. For example, the elections must be fair and the rulers should be elected for a Limited period. We can say that India has this feature to a great extent in spite of a lack of integrity of most of the political-leaders.
There is the judiciary to interpret the constitution and to maintain fairness of practices of political parties besides other matters. Then there is the autonomous Election Commission to ensure fair elections. In a democracy, there should be a strong opposition to control the, excesses of the ruling party. India certainly has the opposition though it cannot be said with certainty whether it is strong or not.
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On the other land, coalition governments control the decision making at the centre with difficulty because of the differences amongst the constituent parties. Democracy is based on the opinion of the people and that opinion can be said to be true and strong only if the people are literate and enlightened and cannot be led astray because of their ignorance and superstitious nature.
But there is a widespread illiteracy in India and it has to be eradicated before we can emphatically claim the success of democracy here. Thus much has yet to be done in this field. Still, we can at least say that the Indian people have tasted a democratic setup for half a century and this setup seems to have caught firm roots in our country. It is also important that the lights of minorities should be taken care of and the depressed classes should not feel ignored.
Many efforts are being made in this respect though we cannot claim with pride that everything necessary has been done. In India, a number of welfare schemes for the poor, the unemployed, the aged and others have been initiated.
There is a general talk about women’s and children’s rights. But Dr. Amartya Sen, the famous Indian economist who won the Nobel Prize for Economics, 1998, has said that much remains to be done in the fields of education, health and upliftment.
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Rich are becoming richer and the poor are becoming poorer. The country has been virtually usurped by the corrupt politicians, bureaucrats, goons and tax-evaders and scamsters who have no fear of law. Still, let us hope for the best.