farThe creation of India as a sovereign state, accepting the constitution and establishing the Republic of India has gone down the pages of history with many explanations of the word “The Democracy”. The polity, the governance, and the parliament now come to the constructivism of the largest democracy of the world that is, India is the largest democracy, till now.
The constitution having being knotted with the very crux of the word “Constitutionalism” with respect to its pragmatic approach in civil society. Which makes the nation-state (India) accountable for its quality discharging of duties and responsible towards its citizens through the means of the state actors. The above-mentioned stature of the term “Democracy” doesn’t bump into the meaning of basic use of the word “Democracy” in contemporary India.
What are citizens in a democracy? In a democracy citizens are the prioritised locus point of sovereignty. What is the nature of its application in its truest sense in contemporary India? Political leaders with the help of State actors act as a supreme narrative builder with reputes to their hidden self-interests to remain constant in the stage of playing politics.
The monetization of Indian electoral politics is shaping into private property and escalations in activities to gain power through undemocratic means. This sets a new normal in the Indian civil society, where politics of development, education, the welfare of citizens, and nation-building at large has no gist with the sovereignty of the citizens and their rights. The politics of identity, majoritarianism, and religion has miniatured the Idea of India through its practice of the new Indian democracy.
The today’s India with its majoritarian horizons perceives nationalism, rather than democracy to be more primary to political passion. Democracy is just cure to ailing political chaos reasoning to the rights of citizens in the nation. Democracy is a way of affirming human dignity by granting individuals civic standing. There is a crisis of acknowledgment of individuality in the sphere of the Indian political system. Where power is central to political participation.
The Indian democracy also has its connotation with the diversity of its people along the lines of culture and traditions. As Plato has rightly claimed that democracy will contain “a complete assortment of constitutions”. The contemporary exercise of power in India has completely perplexed the lines between tyranny and authority, license and liberty, might and power. These are just words with jumbled meaning in India’s context of discharging duties by the constitutional bodies and state actors. A country that sees the absence of constitutionalism will witness the mayhem of constitutional rights and laws in civil society. Individuality should be supreme while running the state, suppressing an individual’s voice is suppressing individuality in civil society.
Indeed, Democracy’s biggest triumph is that it has proven, the existence of huge diversity is possible and that it has kept India together building a stronger belief system in the existence of effective rule of law and governance in the country. In a similar meaning, the corruption, mediocrity, indiscipline, venality and lack of moral imagination of the political class, makes them incapable of attending the well being of citizens in the democracy.
Indian democracy is losing its effective role in addressing the basic role of the nation-state is due to its contempt for politics. It is by words and meaning that, contempt for politics will be worse than corruption in politics.
What Indian democracy need is a new sense of the relationship between public and private: recognizing that there are some things states are particularly bad at, but also recognizing that we will be impoverished unless all enjoy the minimum bases for social self-respect and acknowledge each other through projects we hold in common.
The protection of individual liberty so that each one of us can realize ourselves in our own way, the provision of security in the wider sense of the term, and the expansion of economic opportunity, is perhaps the most substantive way of creating a social world that is habitable for all. This will require an extraordinary effort on so many different fronts, but understanding the complexity of the task will put us in a far better position to cope with our social world than the politics of illusion that our political parties offer.
Genuine politics is nothing, if not, in Max Weber’s memorable words, the ‘slow boring of hardboards’. The peculiar dignity of democracy is that at least it gives us an opportunity to try to exercise your choice as citizens and there is no to the individual’s sovereignty. A democracy gets effective meaning when citizens become the custodian of asking questions and speaking truth to power.
(The views expressed above are the author’s own. Newsd neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)