The Hindu Business Line : Democratic deficit

Over the years, the connotation of democracy in India has been whittled down to mere holding of periodical elections, holding sessions of national and State legislatures and passing of Budgets and assorted enactments. Once the election is over, and until the next election, the people — the so-called sovereign masters — whose votes are the building blocks of democratic institutions feel themselves out of the loop without any sense of controlling the way governments are run and the administrative machinery functions.

It is not just that they have to watch helplessly the making and implementation of policies which are not to their liking and may even be against their interest; they have to put up with Ministers and elected representatives with criminal antecedents squandering, if not helping themselves to, public funds, and making legislatures resemble a bloody battleground with chairs and mikes freely flying about as lethal missiles.

People hardly get to see their representatives between elections, and, leave alone being able to approach them for redressing their grievances. They often are driven to resort to agitations, sometimes accompanied by violence, as the only method of getting a hearing from government functionaries.

In long-standing democracies, such as in the West, where almost the entire population is literate and awareness of civic rights and responsibilities is widespread, the problem of making governments accountable to the people between elections is solved by a vigilant public and socially activist civil society keeping elected representatives on their toes.

In the US, the members of the lower House, elected once in two years by small electorates of around three lakh per constituency, cannot simply afford to fall foul of their constituents. The provision of recall in some State Constitutions also helps.

Devising measures to make India's democracy genuine is a challenge which thinking citizens cannot evade any longer.

B. S. RAGHAVAN