Democracy

Democracy may be a word familiar to most, but still I would like to mention the fact that demos means pertaining to people and kratios means to rule. Thus this word original coined by the Greeks means rule of people as a whole and not by an individual or a privileged soul. It is a concept still misunderstood and misused in some parts of the world where totalitarian regimes and dictatorships have witnessed popular support by usurping democratic labels like in Iraq and Pakistan. By the dictionary definition, democracy is government by the people in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system. In a famous phrase of Abraham Lincoln, democracy is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.Freedom and democracy are often used in place of each other, but the two are not the same. True, democracy is a set of ideas and principles about freedom, but it also consists of a set of practices and procedures that have been founded through a long history. In short, democracy is the institutionalization of freedom. For this reason, any society must possess time-tested fundamentals of constitutional government, human rights, and equality before the law to be properly called democratic.

Democracies can be typified into two fundamental categories, direct and representative. In a direct democracy, all individuals, without the elected or appointed officials, can participate in making public decisions. This system however seems to be impractical possible only with relatively small numbers of people, say for example in a community organization, village of a developing country, tribal council, or the local unit of a labor union, where members can meet in a single room to discuss issues and arrive at decisions by consensus or majority vote. In rural India the head of such committees are called pancha and the place where issues for a small population of the concerned area are discussed is called panchayat.These meetings are held mostly under a village tree with the maximum number of people who can physically gather in one place and practice direct democracy.Modern society, with its enormous size, complexities and ramifications offers few avenues for direct democracy. Today, the most common form of democracy, whether for a town of 50,000 or nations of 50 million, is representative democracy, in which citizens elect officials to make political decisions, formulate laws, and administer programs for the public welfare. In the name of the people, such authorities can deal with complex public issues in an intellectual and step-by-step manner that requires an investment of time and energy that is often impractical for the vast majority of common citizens. How such officials are elected can vary enormously. On the national level, for example, legislators can be chosen from districts that each elect a single representative. In India there is a system of proportional representation, each political party is represented in the legislature according to its percentage of the total vote nationwide. Whatever the method used, public officials in a representative democracy hold office due to majority. But there is always a fine balance between Majority rule and Minority rights.

It was with India's first democratic leader, Nehru, that the Indian people were initially introduced to democracy. The Indian people live in a very different type of society when compared to the other democratic nations of the world. The Indians were agricultural people and not very industrialized. By Nehru choosing democracy over industrialization, it has taken a lot of time for the idea of industry to catch on. It has only been recently that the Indians have become a part of the computer software industry. The main source of income in India is still crops. Even though India adopted a democratic constitution in 1950, democracy as both a form of government and as an organizing principle of politics continues to be a contentious concept in Indian political discourse. The debate has ranged far and wide giving rise to numerous