One thing that has virtually mesmerized the whole world these days is perhaps ‘DEMOCRACY’.

Though it is not of nascent origin and has been in vogue for past couple of centuries in some form or the other in many countries, its magical spell has however made it a CATCHWORD almost in all countries and profusely regarded to be the BEST form of government.

Having suffered the tyranny of mighty monarchies for centuries together, people gradually started realizing their own value and human dignity as also immutable power of their collective strength. They considered democracy as a panacea of all evils & maladies of all other kinds of governments the rule or rather the misrule of which they were subjected to suffer until the wisdom or the virtue of democracy descended on them.

The blitzkrieging impact of scientific & technological development gave further impetus to this thought in gaining a universal currency & appeal as means of communication shrunk the vast world to a manageable extent and spectacularly enhanced accessibility of people from one part of the world to the other.

This awakening of mankind gave rise to a tumultuous uprising of people at places where people were damned to suffer their fate in the darkness of ignorance of their intrinsic value & strength and desperately awaited a golden sunrise to herald a better &dignified future for them. No wonder the preceding couple of centuries witnessed many a revolution in the wake of this cataclystic upheaval all over the world.

This inevitably led to overthrowing of tyrannical monarchies where ever these existed and had earned the notoriety of a colossal parasite surviving on the sweat & blood of the gullible people. Democracy is a self contained political mechanism conceived to empower the people only to serve the people for their growth, development and prosperity in a decent, dignified way. Great scholars and thinkers extensively extolled on the merit of this form of people oriented government and considered it to be the best one to adequately cater to the ever rising hopes & aspirations of the people.

One of the legendary philosophers, thinkers and scholars of our times, Abraham Lincoln, beautifully embodied the significance of people within the Statecraft and defined Democracy as Government of the people by the people for the people.

Obviously as understood by this definition democracy should necessarily be equipped and well geared to adequately address to the basic needs& requirements of the people in a substantially wholesome manner with no place for autocracy or authoritarianism playing a nasty role. People’s satisfaction or contentment by and large should ideally be the sole criterion of the success or failure of this form of government. Here no one single person’s writ prevails as in the case of a monarchy, but an elected body of people carrying the mandate of people in fact rules the roost.

There is no standard template for this and each country opting for democratic form of government adopts a model that best suits its body polity. We in our country have adopted parliamentary form of government drawing inspiration from The Great Britain where it is supposed to be working well.

Here the “people” constitute the real crux/pivot of the government and wield the ultimate sovereign authority to rule the state. Since it is not practically possible to ascertain each individual’s opinion about the choice of his/her leader, his/her vision about the future of the country, ELECTIONS are supposed to be the best via media to do so and therefore regularly free & fair elections are held in our country to elect our leaders from a wide range of RECOGNISED political parties each having its own distinct political philosophy & policy for the growth & development of the country.

It however does not mean that election could be contested only from the plank of a recognized political party at National or State level. There is no bar or prohibition imposed by our constitution on an individual to throw himself/herself into the fray of election on his/her own if he/ she considers himself/herself competent to do so according to the relevant guidelines of the Law in this behalf and is capable to command the requisite support of masses about the agenda he cherishes close to his/her heart to be implemented for the growth and development of this country.

A conjoint & comprehensive study of Art(s). 14, 15, 16 and 325 of our Constitution accords right of equality and protection from any kind of discrimination based on caste, creed, religion, domicile, sex etc. to its citizens and Art.19 further clothes him/ her with a fundamental right to enjoy a wide tally of freedoms, including that of contesting elections ,subject of course to certain reasonable clutch of restrictions ,if and ever found, necessary in some cases in the vital interest of public order, National security &integrity etc.

These elections are conducted under the aegis of Election commission(s) both at national level for the Lok Sabha and at State level for the State Assemblies popularly known as Vidhan Sabhas. It is thus the bounden duty of the Election Commission(s) to see to it that the elections whenever and whereever necessitated to be held owing to the expiry of the fixed term of the House concerned or otherwise in the event of some political exigency having so developed as to necessitate fresh elections are conducted in a free & fair manner and the foul, nefarious game of money or muscle power, in no case spoils the sanctity and credibility of free & fair elections so held.

Once the elections are so held in such a mandated manner and results are declared in equally impartial and dispassionate manner, the political party or a combination of likeminded political parties/independents having been declared elected and enjoying majority of its elected members then lay their claim before the president or the governor as the case may be to form the government.

Once the government is so installed as per the laid down procedure, the party in command of authority of government or the combination of parties forming government (euphemistically called a coalition government) draws up a charter of activities on priority basis on the basis of mutual consensus so arrived at among the parties joining hands together to form the government and go about to implement the same.

Allegorically it could be said whether it is parliamentary form of democracy as we have in our country or any other variant form of democracy as in vogue in other many other parts of the world, it is clear that if democracy (in simpler terms the government) is a pudding ,people are its very basic ingredient and election is a process of its formation(preparation) and to see if it tastes well as was desired to taste, the sole arbiter to judge this is the ballot (palate) of “PEOPLE” only and none else.

A cursory diagnosis of current state of affairs would reveal that our democracy is prima facie suffering from following malaise:-

In our parliamentary form of government, barring a sprinkling of a fringe of independent aspirants (considering their prospect of success under the prevailing circumstances) generally it is the political parties that hold the sway in influencing the conduct of elections.

Here all the nefarious activities come into play to grab a ticket by hook or crook. Unscrupulous power hungry political activists with no concern for public weal, all of a sudden surface on the scene and enjoy a field day employing all means to get a ticket. Here the only qualification that works in a candidate’s favour to bag a ticket is proximity with the party head who considers the suitability of candidate not on the basis of his/her passion if any, for public service but on his prowess to exploit public sentiments on caste, religion, region basis, his/her money/ muscle power to have lasting impact on electorate etc.

In other words the art of chicanery clinches the issue. To reap a rich harvest of votes of gullible voters liable to fall an easy prey to the machinactions of such politicians the political parties incorporate such sensitive issues as would facilitate exploiting the sentiments of a section of people who would be given in their trap and start mistaking them as their real champion. Obviously this approach further accentuates the cult of sychophancy and mediocracy besides causing fissures in our society on caste and communal lines which indubitably have a debilitating impact on our democracy.

Ironically almost all the political parties constituting the very kernel of our democratic system do not follow canons of democracy in their own internal management . There is no gainsaying of the fact that they preach of democracy without practicing the same in their own cases. They seldom hold internal elections to elect their leader in a democratic way. This indeed is a dangerous portent for our democracy that calls upon the intelligentsia/civil society to seriously ponder over it before it is too late.

It is high time that serious efforts were made in right earnest to salvage our democracy from further damage by such a creed of vicious vectors and prove our credentials as true sentinels of democracy . Let it be a clarion call to bestir ourselves or else the progeny shall not spare us for such an obtrusive sense of complacency and gross inaction.