Yes, India is a democracy. It has a government of the people, by the people for the people. The people have elected their representatives to formulate policies, prepare programmes and ensure their implementation for the welfare of the people whom they represent. The welfare of the people is the sole objective. Every action of the elected representatives of the people who have been given the responsibility of implementing the policies and programmes has to be judged and evaluated according to these parameters. The purity in public life becomes relevant and assumes importance. The interested persons with their own ideology/methods or affiliated to the ideology of some political party can go to the people of the country every five years and get a mandate from them to work for their welfare and development. The promises made by different candidates are not much different so far as national issues are concerned. The elections as such are mostly based on local issues. There remains much scope of playing upon public sentiments on various pretexts. Therefore, a public representative must have highest degree of commitment to the welfare of the poorest of the poor, weakest among the weak and the most deserving among many deserving persons in the society.
It is said that democracy consists of four key elements; a political system for choosing and replacing the government through free and fair elections; the active participation of the people, as citizens, in politics and civic life; protection of the human rights of all citizens; and a rule of law, in which the laws and procedures apply equally to all citizens. Legal equality, political freedom and rule of law and having access to legislative processes. Four pillars of democracy are the legislature, Executive, judiciary and the Media. Each pillar must act within its domain without losing sight of the larger picture. The strength of democracy depends upon the strength of each pillar and the way pillar’s complement each other. Fundamental worth of every person. everyone is worthy of being part of our democracy, Equality of all persons, everyone has equal opportunity and legal equality regardless of gender, religion or race. Majority rule and Minority rights.
India has been a successful democracy in the world since time immemorial. It is in our DNA. The world has learnt much about this system of governance. In the modern world countries, ours is the largest democracy. The Constitution Amendment (Seventy-third Amendment) Act ,1992 came into effect from 24th April, 1993. In most of the Indian States/ Union Territories this amendment has been implemented to strengthen the grass root level democracy through duly elected and empowered Panchayati Raj Institutes. While some democratic countries in the world trusting a trickle down effect and have reserved seats for women M. Ps /M. L. As, India has adopted a grass roots approach to the empowerment of women and has begun it at the lowest tier of a government-working the way upward.
The need of the hour is to strengthen the democracy in India by being positive and constructive in our thoughts, actions and deeds. The people have to be more sensitive to the conduct of our political leadership in particular and the other three pillars of the democracy and must continue to build a reasonable check so that the peace, stability, justice, development and the image of the country does not fall prey to anyone’s vested interests including apprehensions to grab power by foul means.