Democracy_in_India

The word democracy has its origin in the Greek word “Democratika”. The history says that few Greek cities like Athens had democratic form of government as early as in 400 B.C. But, the democracy that we are seeing today is something which developed in France during the 18th century as a result of French Revolution. Until the last quarter of the 18th century France was under king’s rule. The society was a feudal one, divided into three estates namely, the first, the second, and the third estates. The First Estate consisted of the clergy men and the Father of the Church. The Second Estate consisted of Nobles, Landlords and the aristocrats. The Third Estate consisted of the rest of the society i.e. the big businessmen, the merchants, the court officials, lawyers, the peasants, landless labor and the servants etc.. The French King, Louis XVI, of the Bourbon Family of Kings ascended the throne in 1774 only to find empty treasury and the dwindling financial position of the state. Even in this financial state France under the reign of Louis XVI helped thirteen American colonies win independence from common enemy Britain. This added to the financial woes. The debts had increased substantially and the lenders were demanding interest on the credits provided by them so the French Government was obliged to allocate a large part of its budget to meet its interest expense. Apart from these expenditures the state had other regular expenses to meet like that of maintaining the army running the court, the government offices, universities and other similar offices. The king was forced to increase the tax burden on the public. The first two estates were exempted from tax liability so the entire tax burden fell on the shoulders of the third estate or the common man. Apart from the taxes imposed by the king at that time the church also imposed taxes on the citizens called the tithes, it comprised of the one tenth of the total agricultural produce this was imposed mainly on the peasants. France at that time had witnessed a population boom; its population had increased approximately by five million during 1715 to 1789. This population boom in France led to the price rise. The worst hit were the members of the third estate as their income was fixed and were not increasing proportionately with the price hike. The King still had to increase the taxes, but the monarch was not authorized to increase the taxes as per its wills and whims, for increasing taxes the king was to call a General Estate. It was an assembly where the representatives of all the estates assembled. In the old regime i.e. before 1789 each estate had a vote each. This time the general estate had assembled after 175 years after 1614. In the meanwhile philosophers like Rousseau had written “The Social Contract” which professed democracy. Now when the assembly was held, people in the assembly which comprised of 300 members from the First and Second Estate and 600 from the Third Estate demanded a vote each for every representative, when the king denied it the members of the third estate walked out of the house. Many events followed this event such as the meeting of the people from the Third Estate in an indoor tennis court on 20th June 1789 and called themselves National Assembly. They had sworn not to disperse until they were able to constitute a constitution and they also identified themselves as the spokesperson for the entire French nation. The leaders of the National Assembly, Abbe Sieyes and Mirabeau however belonged to the first and the second estate state respectively. The former was a priest in the church and had authored pamphlet called “What Is the Third Estate'” and the later was a noble and was aware about the drawbacks of a feudal society. At that time the entire France was witnessing a state of turmoil, bad winter added to the sufferings and the shortage of food resulted in shooting of the prices of bread which was the main food in the France, the bakers exploited the situation making it even worse. The king ordered his troops to march into the capital. In the countryside, rumor spread that the landlords had hired a group of brigands to set ablaze their ripe crops. The fear frenzy people mostly comprising of peasants caught hold of whatever they got and attacked the chateaux or the government buildings and offices. Under all this pressure, the king Louis XVI recognized the National Assembly and signed the constitution. He also agreed to the fact that his powers were checked by the constitution. On 4th august 1789, The Assembly passed a decree abolishing the feudal obligation and taxes. Clergymen were forced to give up their privileges. The drafting of constitution was completed in 1791.the main object of this constitution was to limit the powers of the monarch. It focused on decentralization of power. Different bodies were assigned different jobs. The bodies were the Judiciary entrusted with law and order responsibility, the Executive which was made to execute the decisions passed in the legislature. And the third was the legislature it was the assembly where representatives of people who were duly elected discussed various issues of public interest. This model of democracy is existent in our current country and had been proposed by Montesquieu in his “The Spirit of Laws”. But it was quite different from present day democracy in some aspects. At that time the population of France was divided into passive and active citizen. The Active citizen were those who paid taxes equal to the three days wages and had attained the age of 25years. The women and the other non tax payers were passive citizens and were denied voting right. To qualify as an elector and as a member of assembly a person had to belong to the highest bracket of tax payers. The constitution drafted by the national assembly started with the words Right of Man and Citizen. Rights such as right to life, right to freedom of speech, freedom of opinion, equality before law, were established as natural and inalienable rights. These natural and inalienable rights are also a part of our Constitution. It also stated that it was the duty of state to protect each citizen’s natural right. But this kind of assembly was only concentrated with the rich people. At the same time France witnessed the sprouting of various clubs. Political clubs were also formed to discuss the politics and related issues. However, the most popular of them was the Jaccobin Club under the leadership of Maximillan Robespirre. This club was mostly joined by the lower income group like the daily wagers, shoe makers, pastry makers and other such people. In the summer of 1792 Jacobins planned a revolt against the Government. On 10th August the stormed into the palace of Tuileries, massacred the king’s guards and held the king as hostage for several hours. Latter the assembly ordered the imprisonment of the royal family. The elections were held and the constitution was amended and the voting age was reduced to 21years. Voting rights were now availed by all men above 21years of age. However, the women were denied voting rights until 1946. On 21st September 1792, the monarchy in France was demolished and it became a Republic Maximilan Robespirre imprisoned the entire royal family and the King was trailed in the court of Law and found to be guilty of treason. He had secretly entered into negotiations with the King of Prussia in the year 1791 to suppress the revolts in the nation and regain the powers of Monarch. The period during 1793 to 1794 was seen as the reign of terror in French history. The Jacobbian leader Robespirre was a severe man, he eliminated all those people whom he saw as enemy of the republic mostly the ex-nobles and aristocrats, even the people of other political parties and his own party were not spared when seen as threat to democracy. Even the ones who defied his methodologies were severely punished and sometimes guillotined or beheaded. Finally in 1794 he was arrested and tried and very next day he was also guillotined. the fall of Jaccobian government paved way for the rich section again into the government and a new constitution was again drafted this time two legislative houses. However there was always a conflict in this type of governance. This could not carry any further and was latter was replaced by a military dictator Napoleon Bonaparte. In India democracy was much of a surprise gift by the British who were finding it unfeasible to run the Indian colony after the financial blow it suffered in the Second World War. It hastily declared India an independent country and was made a democracy. But the society here had been living under monarchy and had been habituated to live under authoritarian rule. The sudden freedom in all respect was something that they could not digest. Had it been granted gradually the current scenario would have definitely been something different. In France the constitution evolved gradually but here in India it was relatively spontaneous. In present situation the Indian state is facing a hail of problems and democracy has reduced to just a cloak covering the feudal structure of Indian politics. The present situation of our democratic state is similar to that of the France when constitution was recognized by the king and National Assembly was recognized in 1791. It was made constitutional monarch. The powers of authoritarian government was reduced and checked by the constitution. In India, we often find the public representatives are mostly affluent people. They belong to high class and if not high class they are from hyped society, they are mostly rich and influential or ex-IAS officers and a few of them are highly educated people. In this country a very small section of society is highly educated or can afford education. And even if educated only those people enter politics that have political connections and are known publicly be it film actors or any celebrity. Corruption is something which acts as a push factor for desires to earn easy and early money. Since human is a gluttonous creature its needs have no ends. The immature and uneducated society instead of checking it shelters and promotes it. This problem might have been checked had the society been mature and aware of the problems that this social evil is posing and how severe its consequences may turn up for it. Maslow says that a man first attends to his basic needs that is food, clothing and shelter then comes his security and the social needs then comes the luxuries and after all his needs are fulfilled then he can think of charity. We say that youth is the future of the nation but when we see the youth leaders in today’s India most of them are children of the senior political leaders. Even in the grass root level of politics we find the children of influential people easily entering into the politics. For instance, in the college elections we do find that privilege is given to the children of political leaders and rich businessmen. The reason is simple and clear that they are better recognized in the offices have stronger say than any common man. It is always good for the college when they are at the forefront because they can arrange for more sponsorship during the college events. This thing is also seen in the school level teachers are biased towards the richer students. It is some what similar to the situation that was prevalent in France when National Assembly came into power. Nepotism is one of major threat to the Democracy in India. .Here the political parties have drifted from their main function and only focus on the winning the election, the service motive is missing grossly. Exceptions are everywhere, but when viewed at a large this is what appears. With the roots of corruption and nepotism penetrating so deep and still growing one can easily assume how much time it will take for a full fledged democracy to establish. Other thing that is affecting our democracy is the wide spread poverty and unemployment. It has been 63years since we have been independent still we are at the nascent stage of democracy. This can be made speedily be achieved if mass is educated and awareness is spread uniformly and intensively so as to enable them to take decision wisely. The political parties should be created on the basis of shared thoughts and ideologies. The recruitment of party workers must be done carefully after judging their political and mental traits. Now days many anti social elements join these political parties to use them as umbrella against any kind of legal action against them. But, till than full fledged democracy is beyond sight and we have long way to go.