Making democracy meaningful (What freedom means)

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 Making democracy meaningful (What freedom means)

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• What democracy in India means : For Indians, periodic elections, party-based politics and universal adult franchise are the main features of democracy. But can this be the only way to look at what democracy truly means?
• Elections = Democracy : By making this wrong equation, we have made Means = Ends, making the means all-powerful. When we say that "elections are the festival of democracy", we indicate that the role of masses ends with voting. That is a dangerous thought.
• Pre-requisites for fair elections : If our elections really represent the will of the people, they have to be fair. In the initial decades, as the poor and marginalised voted alongwith the rich and mighty, it did seem that elections were the sole conveyor belt of popular will in India. But today, the way things are done, has clouded everything.
• Today's problems : The hype, the money needed, the votebanks creation, the media obsession, and the portrayal in media as a big fight has harmed the idea of "elections as the main device to represent popular will".
• Building social silos : To make winning easier, political parties have tended to club voters into identifiable silos, instead of ensuring a constant upwardly flow. The goods and bounties given are clouding the key idea of "redistribution of resources and opportunities".
• The 1919 Montagu-Chelmsford reforms : The INC had rejected the 1919 reforms which had expanded the electoral base, and had serious doubts about the GoI Act 1935 initially. But the 1951-52 general elections in India demonstrated to the wider world that Indians had finally put their faith in elections to create rulers for a Parliamentary Democracy.
• Left parties join in : Those who resisted initially, too joined the election bandwagon. So we finally see a collective community of free and equal citizens willing to define their future, with all their differences and plurality.
• Bonds between Indians : Given our history, and the immense diversity, our bonds cannot be taken for granted. They have to be forged consciously, and our constitutional framework is a great guide for it.
• Auditing the manifestos : To ensure that the political project continues smoothly, we need to audit all promises regularly, and ensure that adequate opportunities come to all Indians otherwise they may not be interested even in the elections.
• Summary : The Indian democratic project has come to be defined purely by elections, but freedoms mean much more than that.

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