Defining DEMOCRACY

Defining DEMOCRACY

The term Democracy originates from the Greek word dēmokratía. It means "rule of the people" and not "rule by representatives" as generally perceived. The definition implies that democracy is a system far above individuals; in fact it is collective in nature. And the key word for any collective exercise is participation. In ancient India, during Buddha’s time, such village republics existed aplenty where periodic local meetings took place in which ALL people of a locality took policy decisions. Thereafter, India went through nearly a millennium of slavery by various foreign civilizations until it gained independence in 1947.

In this interim period, world over and especially in Europe and America, renaissance happened resulting in liberal thoughts taking center stage. The impact of it was that in such places democracies took root and flourished. These democracies were more or less akin to the ancient Indian republics, i.e. they were participatory in nature.

Even during the freedom struggle tall men like the Father of our Nation Gandhiji fiercely advocated autonomous ‘village republics’ in his seminal book “Hind Swaraj”. Incidentally, India in 1947 adopted the model of representative democracy. This was understandable because a dominion nation gaining full-fledged participatory democracy in one leap was a tall order. The ill- effects of representative democracy are becoming glaringly obvious in India of the recent past. Uncivilized tendencies like corruption, alarming crime increase, rapes, mal- governance, anarchy, exploitation, huge economic disparity, hunger, lack of basic amenities to millions etc are seen only in the representative democracies. Empirical evidence suggest that these banes are absent in participatory democracies.

It is high time, India matures into participatory democracy because the inherent flaw of the representative democracy is that it is nothing but time bound dictatorship. Participatory democracy is entirely intra-vires our constitution as proven in Constitutional Amendments 73 & 74. The critical elements to be achieved in this transition from representative to participatory model are ‘Right to Reject’ and ‘Right to Recall’, an effective and independent watchdog to audit -and if need be reprimand malafide policy framers and constitutional validity & autonomy to primary local bodies like ‘Gram Sabhas’ and ‘Ward Sabhas’. This is Swaraj.

It is amply clear that the present political class of India will not initiate this change for the simple reason that they have a vested interest in the present status-quo. Revision is anathema to status-quoists. Yet this status-quo is unacceptable to the citizenry of India for the obvious reason that the citizenry is not benefiting from this status-quo. An absence of social audit as well as license to rule once elected has resulted in ‘Power begets money’ & ‘Money begets Power’ syndrome. The nation however is yearning change. It is in this light that the massive public support and the meteoric rise of civic society movements like the JanLokpal movement should be viewed.

The disenchantment of the citizenry from the present representative model of democracy seems to be the genesis of Aam Aadmi party. AAP should stand for complete destruction of power centers -meaning constitutional unitary independence to all respective units to frame policy, ‘Right to Reject’ and ‘Right to Recall’ and an effective and independent JanLokpal to correct erring administrators.

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